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The European Tour 



The European Tour 



BY 

GRANT ALLEN 

Author of "Florence," "Paris, 1 
"Belgium," etc. 



t 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1899 



' ! 



20 

Copyright, i8QQ y 
By Dodd, Mead and Company. 



TWOCOPMF-5 *»C«!IVED. 







SSttttersttg $rcss: 

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 






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Contents 



/y 



Chapter Page 

I. The Use of Europe i 

II. What Parts of Europe to Visit . . 19 

III. The Hasty Visitor 35 

IV. England : The Country 40 

V. London 66 

VI. France : Paris 82 

VII. France : Outside Paris 99 

-VIII. Belgium and Holland no 

IX. The Rhineland 140 

X. Switzerland, etc 156 

XL The Threshold of Italy 172 

XII. The Great Italian Cities 192 

XIII. Florence . .- 200 

XIV. More About Florence 212 

XV. Venice 241 

XVI. Romewards 257 

XVII. After Rome 284 

XVIII. The Author's Apology 293 



The European Tour 

CHAPTER I 

THE USE OF EUROPE 

X70UNG man, go to Europe/ 
•*■ It is not without due reflection that I ven- 
ture thus to reverse the geographical direction of a 
famous saying. Horace Greeley requires revision. 
As America now stands, I believe by far the most 
valuable education a young man can obtain is a 
European trip, undertaken during the years most 
often devoted to a college course. It costs no 
more ; it may even cost less ; and I make bold to 
say it is immeasurably more educative. 

If I were a European born, indeed, I would not 
have the audacity thus to address the American 
public. Readers might suspect me of that cele- 
brated " condescension observable in foreigners " 
on which Lowell insisted. But I speak from ex- 
perience. I am myself a brand plucked from the 



2 The European Tour 

burning. Born and bred on the American conti- 
nent, I came to Europe as a very young man ; I 
have lived here now for over thirty years ; and I 
have slowly learnt how to appreciate its educational 
advantages. Allowing that America is the best 
country in which to be born, I still maintain that 
Europe is the best country in which to get a year's 
education. 

I do not mean a year spent at school or college. 
I do not even mean a year of strenuous and con- 
scientious sight-seeing, undertaken solely with an 
eye to edification. I mean a year of travel^ en- 
joyment, observation ; a year of free use of lungs 
and limbs ; a year of pleasant touring through 
beautiful country and beautiful cities. The best 
learning of all is the learning we acquire without 
ever knowing it. Mugging up a subject, cram- 
ming for an examination — these are the ways to 
undermine and destroy our interest in knowledge. 
Going about the world, to amuse ourselves, with 
our eyes open, — that is the way to preserve and 
enlarge it. For everything depends upon the en- 
joyment we receive. Nothing makes impressions 
so vivid as pleasure. Just as it is better exercise 
to play base-ball, cricket, foot-ball, lawn-tennis, to 
row, to ride, to swim, to climb mountains, than to 
drill in a prison yard or to walk up and down a 



The Use of Europe 3 

measured mile in Central Park, so it is better edu- 
cation to visit the Louvre, Notre-Dame, Venice, 
Munich, Athens, than to grub up Greek roots 
with a dictionary and grammar. Let the other 
education come afterwards, if you like ; but gain 
first a living interest in the languages, the litera- 
tures, the history of Europe by delightful tours 
through the lands that produced them. 

• Nor do I intend this solemn advice for paradox. 
I utter it as serious practical reasoning. You are 
a father, let me suppose, and you are thinking of 
sending your son to college. Why to college? 
Now, sit down and argue it out with yourself like 
a man — which will be really the best for him in 
the end ? Will he learn more that is ultimately 
useful to him in life by spending three years over 
dead languages which he never fully masters, and 
for which he can have no personal use hereafter — 
or by travelling from a year to eighteen months in 
Europe ; seeing England, France, Germany, Italy, 
Switzerland ; storing his mind with knowledge of 
art, knowledge of history, knowledge of geography, 
knowledge of human nature ; gaining an insight 
into the manner of thought, of speech, of life, and 
of industry among the living peoples who have con- 
tributed to build up the population, the laws, and 
the institutions of his own country ? I say un- 



4 The European Tour 

hesitatingly, the latter. One year in the great 
university we call Europe will teach him more than 
three at Yale or Columbia. And what it teaches 
him will be real, vivid, practical, abiding ; a part of 
himself thenceforth; flesh of his flesh, and blood 
of his blood ; ingrained in the very fibre of his 
brain and thought ; an inalienable possession to 
carry through life with him. He will read deeper 
meaning thenceforward in every picture, every 
building, every book, every newspaper; he will 
have put himself in touch with the earlier phases 
of human thought and craft in every one of their 
manifold departments. 

Only two obstacles, I believe, have prevented 
everybody in America from recognising long since 
that a year in Europe ought to be an indispensable 
part of every young American's liberal education. 

The first obstacle is the long-surviving Puritan 
idea — equally rife in England — that knowledge, to 
be solid and useful, must be laboriously, painfully, 
and almost unwillingly acquired — that what is 
learned with ease, with enjoyment, with delight, 
almost unconsciously to the learner, cannot be 
really valuable. Learning is taken as a sort of 
penance ; in the sweat of his brow, people think, 
must man till the field of knowledge. The exact 
opposite, I believe, is the actual truth ; only what is 



The Use of Europe 5 

learned with joy and spontaneously, ever really and 
deeply benefits the learner. " No profit comes 
where is no pleasure ta'en," says the poet : " Study 
what you most affect " is sound wisdom as well as 
good poetry. Few men remember in middle life 
any of the beggarly stock of Greek and Latin they 
acquired for the moment at school or college. 
Why ? Because they never cared for it ; there- 
fore they never really learned it. They cribbed it 
up for the moment, with the aid of a Bonn's trans- 
lation, to pass an examination or gain a degree; 
and as soon as that was done, they gladly forgot it 
all. How different is the knowledge one has drunk 
in with pleasure in examining some stately cathe- 
dral, some exquisite temple, some fresco of Fra 
Angelico's, some relief from the perfect chisel of 
Pheidias ! Those things and the knowledge of 
them live with one forever. You don't try to 
remember them. You could n't forget them. 

The second obstacle is the good old belief, still 
more or less current, that "a European education" 
unfits a young man for life in America — gives him 
ideas and sympathies out of harmony with those 
of the mass of his fellow-countrymen. I believe 
there is some grain of truth in this prejudice, if by 
" a European education " is meant an education at 
Oxford or Heidelberg. I don't think European 



6 The European Tour 

universities afford the best training for a man who 
has to earn his living by commerce or finance in the 
United States or Canada. But a real " European 
education" is quite another matter — the sort of 
education that is got by seeing Europe — the educa- 
tion of which Europe itself is the main factor. To 
graduate in that great school is easy and pleasant. 
Wherever a man is going to live and work, how- 
ever a man is going to earn his livelihood, it can 
do him nothing but good to have seen and under- 
stood London, Paris, Vienna ; to have learnt how 
men built at Cologne and at Oxford; to have real- 
ised how men painted at San Marco in Florence 
or at the Hospital at Bruges ; to have beheld the 
Roman Forum and the Athenian Acropolis ; to 
have stood beside the Pyramids — which are 
Europe enough for my purpose — and to have 
walked with a torch through the pictured Tombs 
of the Kings at Thebes. All that is education ten 
thousand times better than one can get out of 
books ; and the American can only obtain it in 
perfection by European travel. 

By far the best and truest teachers are the eyes. 
Books substitute for them the ears, and even the 
ears but symbolically. The current misapprehen- 
sion about what constitutes a good education dates 
back to the days when travel was difficult, danger- 



The Use of Europe 7 

ous, and expensive, — when men had to be content 
with book-knowledge about most subjects of hu- 
man interest. At the present day that misappre- 
hension persists unduly, out of accord with our 
times; it has lived on into an age when travel is 
cheap, safe, and comfortable, and when first-hand 
knowledge is easier and pleasanter to acquire than 
second-hand. Yet we insist upon setting our 
young men to puzzle out Homer and Herodotus, 
who are to them mere names, when half an hour 
spent intelligently among the Parthenon sculptures 
at the British Museum would give them a more 
real and vivid interest in Hellas and the Hellenes 
than months of poring over irregular verbs or the 
uses of the optative. Moreover, if once you have 
learned to love and sympathise with Hellenic art, 
you are already more than half a Hellene ; the lan- 
guage, the poetry, the history of Hellas will become 
easy and simple to you, because you want to know 
them : you will study them now with enthusiasm 
and pleasure, out of pure desire to understand and 
appreciate the beautiful things that have begun by 
interesting you. I well remember a striking remark 
which a lady once made to me at Venice — " His- 
tory seems to be real here." 

History seems to be real! That is the true 
secret of the great good of travel. Till you go 



8 The European Tour 

to see the tombs of Charles the Bold and Mary 
of Burgundy at Bruges, you have probably never 
troubled your head for one moment about the ex- 
istence and fate of the Burgundian duchy. But 
as soon as you have seen those exquisite monuments, 
you cannot help reading about them ; and when 
you go on to Dijon, you put two and two together ; 
or when you see the Burgundian statues in the 
Renaissance sculpture gallery at the Louvre, you 
build up your knowledge, piecing this and that; 
till, little by little, without an effort on your part, 
you find that what was once a vast unconscious 
blank has filled itself up everywhere with facts and 
instances. You begin to understand and know your 
Burgundy ; it has wrought itself into your brain 
by many twining strands which cannot ever again 
be lightly untwisted. 

Furthermore, one of the surviving absurdities of 
our existing system of education is the ridiculous 
importance still attached to the acquisition of lan- 
guages. A great many people speak as if knowl- 
edge of tongues were the highest conceivable form 
of knowledge. " Such a very accomplished girl ! " 
they say : " why, she can speak three languages ! " 
The fallacy is due to the traditional notion that 
Latin and Greek constitute u a liberal education." 
That notion was natural enough in the sixteenth 



The Use of Europe 9 

century, when most knowledge had still to be 
dug out of books, and when books were mainly 
written in the dead languages. It is absurd at the 
present day, when knowledge is chiefly to be gained 
by contact with things, and when all useful works 
are written in or translated into the various vernac- 
ulars. Yet so strangely does the old idea persist 
that most people, when they talk of abandoning 
Greek and Latin as the basis of education, think 
of " modern languages" as the only tenable alterna- 
tive. As though you could get any more education 
out of existing French or existing German than 
out of the early speech of Greece and of Italy ! 

I am not prejudiced against the academic system. 
I certainly am not opposed to it from sheer igno- 
rance. To guard against misapprehension on this 
score, I will even venture to add that I am an 
Oxford graduate, a first-class-man in classics, and 
that I was for several years of my life a classical 
master in English public schools, and a Professor 
of Classics in a colonial college. Therefore I 
hope I do not speak with the mere jealousy of the 
unlearned, who think slightingly of arts they have 
not themselves acquired. But my own experience 
has been that all that was valuable in my education 
began after I had left the University. It is from 
things, not from words, that one may learn most of 



io The European Tour 

what is truly useful. If a professor wants to teach 
young men natural history or anatomy, does he 
make them read books? Not a bit of it. He 
takes them out into the fields, and sets them to 
collect and observe for themselves the various 
plants and flowers in all their stages. He puts 
them to watch the developing leaf, the opening 
petals; to note how the stamens stand, and how 
insects disperse the fertilising pollen. He gets them 
to catch and examine bees and butterflies, to cut 
them up so as to observe their internal structure 
under the microscope, and to learn at first hand by 
actual inspection how the creatures are built up, in 
head and limb and organs and integuments. That is 
the source of all real knowledge. Books may be 
used concurrently, no doubt, as useful helps to accu- 
rate observation ; but those books themselves are at 
best but registers of previous careful and excep- 
tionally fortunate observations. Their use is to 
supplement, not to supersede, individual inspection. 
Science is but the record of things seen and noted. 
So too with chemistry and geology. We do not 
set the beginner to read books, books, books. We 
turn him into a laboratory, with test-tubes and blow- 
pipes, to find out for himself the composition of 
substances ; or into the fields with a hammer, to 
determine for himself the structure of rocks, and 



The Use of Europe 1 1 

to note their dip, their tilt, their weathering, their 
sculpture. Books are useful in their place, of 
course, to help him on his way; to direct his 
attention to what others have observed ; and to 
point out the most fruitful methods of personal 
investigation. But at best they are guides to 
knowledge, not knowledge itself. They show you 
where to look, that you may see and understand ; 
they are finger-posts which point you the road to 
the museum, not the actual museum and all its 
contents. 

Now, travel holds the same position with regard 
to mankind, its history, its industry, its arts, its 
organisation, as laboratory work holds to chemistry, 
field work to geology, and dissection to biology. 
If you want to know and understand the world of 
men, you must go and see it. If you want to 
know the origin of the art of building, the art of 
painting, the art of sculpture, as you find them 
to-day in contemporary America, you must look 
them up in the churches and the galleries of early 
Europe. If you want to know the origin of 
American institutions, American law, American 
thought, and American language, you must go to 
England ; you must go farther still to France, 
Italy, Hellas, and the Orient. Our whole life is 
bound up with Greece and Rome, with Egypt and 



1 2 The European Tour 

Assyria. In this connection, I would say, there 
are certain lands which have a first claim upon the 
American, and also on the modern western European 
— the lands which lie in the direct line of ancestry 
of our own civilisation. To see these is the first 
duty we owe to our own culture. It we care at 
all for our intellectual development, we ought at 
least to make a strenuous effort to visit them. 
China and Japan do not belong to our world — do 
not form links in the immediate genetic chain of 
European and American civilisation. Algeria and 
Russia, Norway and Denmark, hardly enter into it. 
Even Spain is rather a backwater on the course (to 
vary the metaphor) than an integral portion of the 
main stream. But England, France, Italy, Constan- 
tinople, Greece, Assyria, Egypt — I name them in 
inverse order, like one looking backward over the 
history of development — do so belong to the direct 
line of our culture : and some acquaintance at any 
rate with all these lands, or at least with their 
ancient arts and monuments, is of the highest value 
as part of a truly liberal education. 

Sight will teach one much more about them all 
than mere language. Gibson the sculptor knew no 
Greek ; but he was a far truer Hellenist than half 
the graduates of Harvard or of Oxford. I have 
met enthusiastic archaeologists who had merely 



The Use of Europe 1 3 

picked up what Latin they knew from deciphering 
inscriptions, but who were nevertheless scholars to 
put to shame most of our college-bred students. 
We can learn more of what Greeks really thought 
and felt by a few visits to the sculpture at the 
British Museum than by hours of poring over 
iEschylus and Aristophanes. Not that I under- 
rate the value of the last, — for the few who really 
possess the linguistic faculty. But as a rule, only 
about five per cent of our college-bred lads ever 
really learn and assimilate enough Greek to feel 
they understand and enter into Plellenic thought ; 
while a schoolgirl who speaks no tongue but 
English can easily be made to read the meaning of 
the iEginetan marbles in the Pinakothek at Munich. 
Or, to take another and still more unequivocal 
example. No one has yet deciphered the ancient 
Etruscan language. Nobody can do himself much 
good by reading even so admirable a work as 
Dennis's Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria by his 
own fireside, without objects at hand for reference 
and identification. Such knowledge as that is 
mere false knowledge, — like the knowledge of 
chemistry or of botany obtained from books, and 
as soon forgotten as read. But go to Volterra, and 
stand among cyclopean Etruscan walls; go to 
Assisi, and descend into the tombs of the Etruscan 



14 The European Tour 

Volumnii ; go to Tarquinii, and roam through 
painted Etruscan chambers of death — and you 
must feel you have entered into the very soul of 
Etruria. Then read Dennis, if you will, by the 
side of the objects he describes and deciphers for 
you ; and you will realise at once how vastly more 
his words now mean to you. It is " the specimen 
that teaches" as we say in biology ; the book merely 
interprets. 

Well, in the sciences which deal with external 
nature, such as chemistry, geology, zoology, phys- 
ics, everybody in America is thoroughly aware of 
the need for the direct method of observation and ex- 
periment. But because America is a comparatively 
new country, lying remote from the origins and 
remains of early art, early architecture, early insti- 
tutions, early history, the need and value of the 
direct method of observation in the sciences which 
deal with man and his products is not quite always 
equally well recognised. And even when it is 
recognised, the recognition is too often in a narrow 
specialist sense ; the investigator goes to inspect a 
particular object for a particular purpose. He 
wants to discover. American scholars have done 
great and splendid work in this way, as, for ex- 
ample, in Greece. But what I plead for here is 
more general recognition of the educational value of 



The Use of Europe 1 5 

travel at large, apart from research in the more 
special sense of the word. I plead that, just as a 
general acquaintance with literature is expected of 
educated men, so should be a general acquaintance 
with countries and their contents. I plead that 
young men, instead of receiving their whole edu- 
cation within a single country — the United States 
— and that a country unequalled for the relative 
uniformity and homogeneity of its system over a 
vast area — should be sent regularly to travel for 
at least six months in Europe (a year is better, and 
two years still more excellent), so as to familiarise 
them with the origins of their own world and their 
own institutions, to give them the wholesome 
mental shock of a complete reversal of many pre- 
conceived opinions. If it is good for a young man 
to read Shakespeare and Dante, Virgil and Sopho- 
cles, it is better for him to have lived in the actual 
world from which Shakespeare and Dante, Virgil 
and Sophocles drew all their inspiration. Only 
Florence can teach you fully to understand the 
Divina Commedla ; only Athens can teach you fully 
to understand the Jjax and the Electra. 

It is to the young man, therefore, and to the 
young man's father, that I specially address my- 
self in this chapter. I want him to consider 
whether a year in Europe is not better spent than 



1 6 The European Tour 

a year (shall we say ?) at Cornell or Princeton. 
Let him do the one, by all means ; but let him not 
leave the other undone. To have seen Europe is 
a very great gain ; and, whatever comes, it cannot 
be taken away from him. He may fail in busi- 
ness, but he has the memory of the Grand Canal 
and the Doges' Palace ; he may get encrusted in 
clogging wealth and overwhelmed with affairs, 
but he has beheld the great Van Eyck at Ghent, 
and gazed in the face of the Sistine Madonna at 
Dresden ; he may gain the whole world and lose 
his own soul — his higher nature — on the Stock 
Exchange, but he will be haunted still by Dona- 
tello's St. George, and redeemed at times by the 
floating form of Michael Angelo's David. So 
once more I say it, " Young man, go to Europe ! " 
As for the elder members of families , and also for 
the women, I have no need to exhort them. Every 
American hopes, of course, some day, to see the 
world across the Atlantic. What I want to do 
here is to point out the advisability of making the 
trip while still young, if possible, as an element in 
education : it is the spiritual importance of the 
European tour that especially appeals to me. Not 
that I mean to advise its being done in any doctri- 
naire fashion. Go about as if to amuse yourself; you 
will pick up by the way quite as much knowledge 



The Use of Europe 1 7 

as is easily assimilable. Grubbing and grinding 
means overfeeding the brain. I once asked my 
friend, Mr. Herbert Spencer, how it came about 
that a man who had thought so much and so deeply 
as he, should have no wrinkles on his forehead at 
over seventy. " George Eliot asked me that," he 
said with a smile ; " and I answered at once, c I 
suppose it is because I never worried over anything. 
I let my thinking come of itself. Never in my 
life did I sit down deliberately to get up a subject. 
I read, observed, and thought, when I liked and 
where I liked, and allowed my ideas to frame them- 
selves naturally.' " The result is that Mr. Spencer 
knows more at this moment than anybody else in 
the whole world ; simply because all his knowledge 
has come to him spontaneously and vividly. I may 
further add that he does not know the letters of the 
Greek alphabet — and, as far as I can judge, man- 
ages to get on very well without them. 

And now I have finished with the educational 
value of the European tour, and will not again re- 
cur to that serious subject. I 'm not going to bore 
you. The rest of my book will be more practical in 
character, consisting of advice for persons of all 
ages and both sexes on what I have found it best 
worth while to see, and on how to set about seeing: 
it to the greatest advantage. I want to throw out 



1 8 The European Tour 

hints for a tour in Europe ; and I feel myself the 
better able to perform this delicate task because I 
have wasted a great deal of good time myself in 
seeing the wrong things, or seeing the right ones 
badly and in the worst order ; so, having learned 
by my mistakes the more excellent way, I am 
prepared to impart my knowledge to others for a 
moderate sum — the price, that is to say, of 
this little volume. 



CHAPTER II 

WHAT PARTS OF EUROPE TO VISIT 

' I V HE use of Europe, then, we are agreed, is 
•*■ that Americans should employ it as a means 
of culture. Other incidental uses it may possess, 
of course — for Europeans ; as a place to make a 
living in, to love, to die for. But these are unes- 
sential. Its true purpose in the scheme of nature 
is clearly for you and me to enjoy ourselves in, 
without prejudice to a little concomitant instruc- 
tion. At least, I shall say so to my American 
readers. 

This point being taken for granted at the outset, 
the question which next arises is somewhat more 
serious, — what parts of Europe are best worth 
visiting ? 

In the nature of things, it may be safely asserted, 
England is the land which possesses the greatest 
intrinsic claim upon the attention of Americans. 
In the nature of things, only, I say ; for, as will 
be seen hereafter, I do not mean to advise that any 
large proportion of a moderate visit should be 



20 The European Tour 

devoted to England. The reasons in favour of 
seeing England are indeed obvious. Englishmen 
were the first great colonising body in the United 
States ; and though I believe the amount and pro- 
portion of the English blood in America is usually 
overestimated (as against Irish, Scotch, Welsh, 
Cornish, French, Dutch, German, and so forth), it 
must at least be allowed that England has given 
the Union its language, its laws, its political insti- 
tutions, its prevailing feeling. Therefore the 
American who visits Europe with some desire to 
know and learn as well as merely to enjoy himself, 
will naturally wish to see something of England. 
In many cases he traces back his ancestry more 
or less certainly to an English family. Even if he 
comes of Dutch or French or German parentage, 
the history of England is still part of the history 
of the institutions under which he lives. The lit- 
erature of England is the literature with which his 
childhood has been most familiar. Stratford-on- 
Avon and Salisbury are to him a sort of senti- 
mental Mecca. More than Englishmen even he 
often feels the glamour of England, for he has not 
always been familiar with its antiquity and its 
beauty, to which mere use and wont have fre- 
quently dulled the senses of Englishmen. If you 
have lived from childhood beside a Norman church 



What Parts of Europe to Visit 2 1 

of the twelfth century, you naturally accept Nor- 
man churches with as little enquiry as the New 
Englander accepts his own place of worship ; but 
if you have never before beheld one, its antique 
arches come upon you with a burst of surprise and 
aesthetic gratification. 

Literature and association, indeed, can thus gild 
for us even the commonest and vulgarest objects. 
I once crossed the Atlantic from New York with 
an eager young Pennsylvanian, who came to Eu- 
rope prepared to be interested in everything he 
saw, including even the first glimpse of grimy 
Liverpool. At Lime Street station we had a few 
minutes to spare before taking the train to Lon- 
don ; and we strolled into the Refreshment Room, 
to consider whether it would be possible for us to 
swallow any of the goods provided for our appetite. 
I gazed at the uninviting wares on the counter 
with a familiar sinking. " The only thing one 
could venture to eat," I said at last, u is a pork 
pie." " Pork pic ? " the young Pennsylvanian ex- 
claimed with delight. " Oh, do let me see them ! 
Why, one reads about them in Dickens ! " 

Allowing, then, that many natural reasons exist 
why the American who visits Europe should desire 
to pass some time in England, I will go on to say 
why I think that time should be cut down as a 



22 The European Tour 

rule to a much smaller proportion than has of late 
been usual. To put it very briefly, the chief rea- 
son why the American need not trouble himself 
long about England is simply this — that he knows 
it almost all already. The very facts I have men- 
tioned above implicitly suggest this idea. Eng- 
land to-day is so like America, America is so 
largely derived from or based upon England, that 
the visitor finds little which is fresh and interest- 
ing to him, little that is unfamiliar, little that is 
instructive. He is still, on the whole, at home — 
in an older, a quainter, a more picturesque home, 
with fewer modern conveniences and the occa- 
sional outcrop of some delightful anachronism ; 
but still, taking it all round, at home, as the Ken- 
tuckian considers himself at home in Ohio, or the 
Bostonian considers himself at home in San Fran- 
cisco. He has not got away from our common 
Englishry. 

Another reason is that England for the most 
part is horribly modernised. Especially is this the 
case with London, which most Americans take as 
their sample of England. Now London is not 
an old town at all as it stands — it is as modern, 
indeed, as New York or Boston — much more 
modern than Quebec or New Orleans. There 
was once an old London, it is true, a picturesque 



What Parts of Europe to Visit 23 

mediaeval city ; but it was almost entirely destroyed 
by the Great Fire in the reign of Charles II. ; and 
though a few earlier buildings still survive as by 
miracle — such as St. Bartholomew's in Smithfield 
— yet the town as a whole dates back at best but 
to the eighteenth century, while most of it is 
frankly of the last two decades. I allow that the 
neighbouring city of Westminster, now partially 
united with London, retains some relics of the 
fabric of its ancient abbey, stripped of its sculpture 
and decorations at the Reformation, and scraped 
and cleaned out of all recognition in the present 
generation by the sacrilegious vagaries of so-called 
" restorers." But, looking at it in the lump, Lon- 
don is almost as brand-new as Chicago ; it contains 
little or nothing of historical and antiquarian inter- 
est, and of local origin, to delay the tourist. Its 
collections of Greek sculpture, of Italian pictures, 
and of Egyptian, Assyrian, or Babylonian antiqui- 
ties, however, brought from elsewhere, stand on 
quite a different plane ; I shall discuss the impor- 
tance and interest of these in the special chapter 
devoted to the things really worth seeing in 
England. 

On such grounds, then, and on many others 
which will become more apparent in subsequent 
chapters, I do not advise any long stay in England. 



24 The European Tour 

I recommend the tourist rather to get forward as 
fast as he can to Continental countries^ which possess 
three greater claims upon his intelligent interest — 
let alone the fact that they are vastly more enter- 
taining, for England is not an amusing country to 
stop in. In the first place, the Continent is more 
novel — contains more to surprise, to interest, and to 
teach the traveller. In the second place, it is older ; 
the ancient buildings, the historical aspect of things, 
have not been so completely overlaid by mere mod- 
ern industrialism, by hotels and warehouses, as in 
all parts of Britain. In the third place, it tells you 
more about the origin of things ; goes further into 
the past ; has deeper developmental and evolution- 
ary value. For these three reasons, and others, I 
think it desirable to spend a relatively small time 
in England, with a relatively long time in France, 
Germany, the Low Countries, and, above all, Italy. 
Moreover — and this is an important point too 
often overlooked — I think the tourist ought to 
take England Iast y not first, in his trip through 
Europe. He should finish off with London, in- 
stead of beginning there. And my reason for say- 
ing so is this. By far the most interesting things 
to see in London — almost the only interesting 
things, indeed — are the collections it contains 
of origin other than English. Now, the begin- 



What Parts of Europe to Visit 25 

nings of these things are best studied elsewhere — 
either in the lands whence they came or in Conti- 
nental museums. London, in a word, possesses 
few native attractions, but extremely rich and valu- 
able collections ; and these are scratch collections, 
groups of objects mostly brought from elsewhere, a 
little haphazard, and only truly to be appraised and 
appreciated after you have made some study of 
greater collections elsewhere. An individual ex- 
ample will enforce my meaning. The National 
Gallery in Trafalgar Square contains in some re- 
spects a fine collection of early Italian and Flemish 
pictures. But you can only really understand 
those pictures after you have travelled in Italy and 
Flanders. The specimens in London are too few 
in number, too isolated in type, to permit of real 
comprehension or thorough enjoyment. After you 
have seen Borgognone at the Certosa di Pavia, in- 
deed, you can appreciate the beautiful Borgognone 
of the Two St. Catherines in Trafalgar Square ; 
after you have seen Mantegna at Paris, Milan, 
Florence, and Mantua, you can discover what he 
is driving at on the walls in London. But in iso- 
lation, — no ! Nobody ever understands Italian 
art till he has travelled in Italy ; nobody ever en- 
ters into Flemish art till he has viewed the Mem- 
lings at Bruges, the Van Eycks at Ghent, the 



26 The European Tour 

Dierick Boutses at Brussels, and the Quentin 
Matsyses at Antwerp. 

I should advise therefore (and I will afterwards 
explain more fully why), that the tourist should 
spend not more than a fortnight or three weeks in 
England at the beginning of his tour, and should 
return to London for a similar period or somewhat 
less before going back to America. And I shall 
endeavor to point out to him briefly what objects 
he ought to see on either visit, and why it is de- 
sirable for him to see them in this order. He may 
think at first he is being trotted about like a child ; 
I would say in reply, " No ; you are being shown 
by one who has learnt through his own mistakes 
what order is most likely to unfold Europe to you in 
a comprehensible, enjoyable, enlightening fashion." 
I am telling you how to make the best use of your 
time, not indeed in the common guide-book sense 
of rushing you blindly through as many things as 
possible in a given period, so that you may go home 
and boast of having " done " them, but in the 
deeper sense of taking you round on a definite plan, 
so that at the end of your trip you may have en- 
joyed yourself throroughly, and yet learned and 
digested as much as was possible. If you will put 
yourself in my hands, I will not treat you irration- 
ally, but will tell you at each step why I think it 



What Parts of Europe to Visit 27 

best for you to see things in just this particular 
succession. 

I will also add here by anticipation that I would 
advise the first visit to England (usually under- 
taken in spring, when the country is at its best) to 
be spent mainly in visiting the country towns, and 
very little in seeing London ; while the capital it- 
self, with its immense collections, should be mainly 
relegated to the final visit. In this way you will 
begin by seeing England, not London ; and it is 
England, rural England, the England of Shake- 
speare and of the Pilgrim Fathers, the England of 
cathedrals, castles, country towns, and great houses, 
that is at once most unlike and most near America. 
Most unlike, because it contains the England of 
the past ; most near, because it is the England 
from which America started. This beautiful Eng- 
land of Oxford, Cambridge, Lincoln, Salisbury, 
Exeter, Lichfield, this England of broad parks 
and stately manor-houses, of ruined abbeys, slow- 
flowing rivers, smooth-swarded farms, and ivy- 
clad castles, is at its best in May and June, which 
are also the most propitious moments for beginning 
an extended tour in Europe. On the other hand, 
the squalid modern industrialism of London may 
be left till any time — it is most characteristically 
squalid and gloomy in late autumn ; while its mag- 



28 The European Tour 

nificent though confusingly varied collections are 
visited to best advantage after rather than before a 
trip to the Continent. 

Do I then recommend the now fashionable 
route, from America to the Mediterranean, begin- 
ning at Genoa ? Emphatically, no ! That seems to 
me the worst possible order in which an American 
can first visit Europe. If he knows Italy already, 
well and good ; but if this is his trial trip, he should 
avoid Genoa. In the first place, he should be let 
down gently; instead of that, the route I indicate 
plunges him at once into the midst of the dirt and 
discomfort of the Mediterranean. In the second 
place, he goes on as a rule from Genoa to Milan, 
Venice, or Florence, and is at once bewildered by 
the unfamiliarity of the new world of art into 
whose midst he is pitchforked, and spoiled for ap- 
preciation of northern art immediately afterward. 
Paradoxical as it may sound to say so, the best 
way to work at history teaching by examples is 
to work backward. Hence the good old plan of 
coming first to Liverpool or Southampton, and then 
trending south by England, France, Belgium, 
Germany, Italy, is undoubtably the best one. In 
this way you dig back through the relatively 
familiar Renaissance and Gothic architecture of 
England and France, and the relatively comprehen- 



What Parts of Europe to Visit 29 

sible painting and sculpture of the Low Countries 
and the Rhine, to Venice and Florence, and 
finally to ancient Rome, still more ancient Athens, 
and very ancient Egypt. You proceed by degrees 
from the known to the unknown ; you trace your 
own familiar arts and crafts and buildings back- 
ward, till you see them emerge at last from primi- 
tive barbarism. 

England first, then — a brief visit to England, 
chiefly to the country, to be hereafter more par- 
ticularised — and next to England, France, more 
especially Paris. At least four weeks should be 
given to this tour — much more if possible. I do 
not, however, advise that the tourist who designs to 
spend only from six months to a year in Europe 
should endeavour to see France as a whole. He 
had better take Amiens, or Rouen, or both, on his 
way from London to Paris — a single night at 
either would just do, but two nights are better; 
and then confine himself to the capital itself, with 
its immediate neighbourhood. If he has plenty of 
time, however, he might also undertake a short 
tour on the Loire, visiting Orleans, Blois, Tours, 
and Angers, and returning to Paris via Le Mans 
and Chartres. The only other places in France 
which I think it worth his while to visit (unless he 
is making a very extended stay in Europe), are 



30 The European Tour 

Rheims, Laon, and Dijon, any of which can be con- 
veniently taken on the road to Switzerland. Full 
information as to what to see in Paris, and how to 
see it to the best advantage, is given in the little 
work entitled Paris, in my series of Historical 
Guides. 

France should certainly come first after England. 
But, second, I would place, without hesitation, the 
cities of Belgium. Indeed, in intrinsic historic 
importance, they rank even higher than Paris. 
The traveller, however, should not go direct from 
Paris to Brussels, which is a very bad order; he 
should take the four great towns in the due succession 
of Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Antwerp. Full infor- 
mation about what to see in each of these towns 
will be found in the volume of this series devoted to 
The Cities of Belgium. It must be borne in mind 
that the Low Countries were the first great trading 
and manufacturing district in the Middle Ages ; 
their civilisation is older and deeper than that of 
England or France ; and they rank second after 
Italy in artistic importance. It is, of course, open 
to the tourist to go straight from London to 
Bruges, taking Paris later; but I recommend 
rather the route sketched out above. It is less 
direct, I admit, but it is far more instructive. 

Belgium, again, is immeasurably more important 



What Parts of Europe to Visit 3 1 

than Holland, which latter country, indeed, hardly 
calls for a visit on any ground save that of its often 
rather tedious paintings. But it is so easily visited 
after Belgium, and can be fairly well seen in so 
very short a time, that it is a pity not to include it 
in a comprehensive plan for visiting Europe. 
Remember, the interest of Belgium is almost 
entirely medieval; the interest of Holland belongs 
mainly to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
Belgium is beautiful; Holland is at best merely 
quaint and picturesque. Belgium has every form 
of art in high perfection ; its architecture is sub- 
lime ; its painting is faultless. Holland has little 
architecture save of a bricky sort ; and its painting 
belongs almost entirely to the late type of Rem- 
brandt, which appeals to artists and connoisseurs, 
but not to the general picture-lover. The little 
collection of Memlings in the Hospital of St. 
John at Bruges (one of the great sights of Europe) 
deserves longer study, in my opinion, than the 
whole of Holland put together. Therefore I 
would say, if possible, devote three weeks or so to 
the towns of Belgium, and see Holland in a few 
days afterwards. 

The order of the Dutch tour is prescribed for you 
by nature. Go direct from Antwerp to the Hague 
— Rotterdam need not detain you. Three days 



32 The European Tour 

should be ample for seeing the Hague, Delft, and 
Scheveningen, all of which lie within a few miles 
of one another. Then give a day each to Leyden 
and Haarlem ; three days to Amsterdam ; and so 
back to Brussels. 

Next in order of evolution comes the beautiful 
Rhine country — the part of Germany earliest civi- 
lised under Charlemagne, and the highroad by 
which the culture of the Latin south slowly wedged 
itself into the solid mass of Teutonic barbarism. 
You are now getting gradually back to Romewards. 
London is modern ; Paris is more ancient ; the Low 
Countries represent pure medievalism ; on the 
Rhine you first touch the connecting link of the 
old Frankish Empire, which carries on the Roman 
civilisation into modern Europe. Here you must 
stop first at Aix-la-Chapelle, to see Charlemagne's 
own church, in which he was buried, and whose 
plan he took from the Roman buildings of the 
decadence, in particular San Vitale at Ravenna. 
Thence you will go on to Cologne; and from 
Cologne, up the Rhine towards Switzerland and 
Italy. 

You may loiter as long as you like on the way, 
of course, among the delightful Rhine towns, and 
at Bale, Lucerne, Interlaken, and so forth ; but I 
do not recommend you before going to Italy to 



What Parts of Europe to Visit 3 3 

turn aside from your path to visit Nuremberg and 
Germany in general; certainly not to Berlin, Dres- 
den, or Munich. The reason for this I will ex- 
plain further on. It is taking things in a palpably 
wrong order. Indeed, I believe it will be best to 
push on for Milan straight from Cologne — not at 
one burst, of course (for that were to miss the 
scenery), but by gradual stages. Say, spend a day 
or two on the Rhine — make it a week if you 
like; then, a night at Bale, a night at Lucerne; 
take the steamer up the Lake ; and go rejoicing 
over the Gotthard, the most beautiful railway jour- 
ney in the world, past the Italian Lakes, to Milan. 
And there — you are in Italy !) 

Italy, and what comes after Italy, we must con- 
sider hereafter. It will suffice to say in this chap- 
ter that Italy is the goal ; and that, after Italy, you 
will understand everything else by the light of what 
you have learned in the " cities of the soul " — 
Venice, Rome, and Florence. 

Briefly, then, I would say; given a year — a 
month of it in England; of which, a fortnight in 
the country at the start, and another fortnight 
in London at the finish. After that, a month in 
Paris ; with a week later on, as you return from 
Italy. Next, a month (more or less) in Belgium 
and Holland. A week or so in the Rhineland. And 
3 



34 The European Tour 

finally, Italy I For Italy, a month or six weeks at 
first in Florence ; then, a month in Venice ; after 
that, as long as you can spare in Rome ; with per- 
haps a brief visit to Naples. Those seen, please 
yourself. Let it be Sicily, Greece, and Egypt, if 
you like ; or let it be a return by Verona, Meran, 
Innsbruck, and Munich, to the Nuremberg group, 
Dresden, and Berlin. But Italy above all things — 
Italy, Italy, Italy ! 

I have justified my book if I succeed in making 
you feel that Italy is the key by which you may 
unlock the secret of Europe. 



CHAPTER III 

THE HASTY VISITOR 

ct T5UT not every one can afford so long a time 
- " - * to see Europe in. I am a busy man; I 
want to go right through, and pick out the kernel 
of it all in six weeks. What advice have you to 
give me ? " 

My dear Sir, none. Frankly, I do not write 
for such as you. You ought to make time in which 
to afford yourself this valuable education. It is not 
my fault if you persist in rejecting so great salva- 
tion. Still, I will do my best for you, promising 
that if, by hook or crook, you can manage it, three 
months is four times as good as six weeks, and 
half a year four times as good as three months, — 
arithmetic to the contrary notwithstanding. 

Well, grant you can take only six weeks ; then, 
use your time carefully to the best advantage. 
Don't try to see much — which is throwing away 
your money ; see a little, and see it, not thoroughly 
(for that is impossible within your limits), but to 
the best advantage under such disadvantages. If 



36 The European Tour 

in six weeks you intend to see London, Paris, 
Brussels, Switzerland, the Rhine, Germany, Milan, 
Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome, and Naples, 
with perhaps a flying trip in your spare moments 
to Athens or Algiers — my book is not for you. 
I cannot help you. And indeed, you need no help, 
save a railway time-table. You can dash on by 
yourself, through thick and thin, like John Gilpin, 
and go home with the proud consciousness of 
having " done Europe." I write rather for that 
growing mass of your countrymen and country- 
women who wish to use their tour as a means of 
culture, and desire rather to see something well than 
to see everything hastily. 

" But is n't it better that I should get some 
rough idea of what England, France, Germany, 
Italy, and Switzerland are driving at, than that I 
should go home having seen just one corner of 
Europe ? " 

My dear Sir, this is a matter of taste and of 
your own wishes. If you would like to behold 
with your bodily eyes the mere outside of many 
towns, the visible life of many nations, that is 
a natural and by no means unmeritorious desire, 
with which I do not presume to interfere in any 
way. I only mean to say, you need no guidance. 
That sort of trip is plain and obvious. The capitals 



The Hasty Visitor 37 

and the great cities form its natural objectives; 
and when you reach them, you will not easily miss 
the things you most require to see in them. Cathe- 
drals and palaces do not require to be sought out 
with a microscope. You can't go out in London 
without discovering the Houses of Parliament, 
Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey, the Thames 
Embankment, St. Paul's, Regent Street, and the 
Empire Theatre. You can't go out in Paris 
without stumbling at once against the Louvre, 
Notre-Dame, the Boulevards, the Rue de Rivoli, 
the Opera House, the Champs-Elysees, the world, 
the flesh, and the devil in general ; and you will 
find no need for a formal introduction. At Flor- 
ence you won't require to be told by an intelligent 
bystander which is the Duomo ; at Venice you 
will make straight by instinct for the Piazza of 
St. Mark's ; at Rome you can readily discover 
the Forum, the Colosseum, St. Peter's, and the 
Vatican, by the light of nature, without an opera- 
glass. Such surface-knowledge of Europe is no 
doubt a great deal better than no knowledge at all 
— it gives you at least a mental picture. But it 
requires no guide-book. You go where you will, and 
you see what pleases you. 

Let us suppose, however, you are a traveller 
whose time is really limited by necessity, and that 



38 The European Tour 

you wish to spend six weeks to good purpose in seeing 
Europe. Then I say to you emphatically, don't try 
to see much ; be content with long journeys and 
a reasonable time in the few places you select. 
And I would divide your time thus : a day or so in 
England ; a week in Paris ; then on by night train 
to Bale, and cross the Gotthard by daylight to 
Milan ; one day in Milan ; a week in Venice; and 
all the rest of your available holiday in Florence. 
Don't on any account try to see Rome and Naples. 
Be content with having gained a first impression of 
the pick of Europe. 

I said, too, a day or so in England. Those few 
days, if you are wise, you will devote to the coun- 
try — about which, more hereafter. But if you 
must see London, give it two days, and spend them 
on the mere exterior of the town — the walk along 
the Embankment, the outside of the Parliament 
Houses, a glimpse of Hyde Park, an omnibus trip 
into the City. You can also visit Westminster 
Abbey, without and within; but I do not recom- 
mend a mere perfunctory walk through the vast 
labyrinthine halls of the British Museum, the South 
Kensington Collections, or the National Gallery. 
Those can only be seen to any advantage if you 
have a much more extended time at your disposal. 
Far better confine your artistic studies to the 



The Hasty Visitor 39 

Louvre at Paris, the Brera in Milan, and the 
great collections in Venice and Florence, where 
you can learn more each day than in a week in 
London. Waste no time on second-rate things 
when you can employ it usefully on those of the 
very first order. 

In one word, what I advise for the hasty (but 
not the hurried) traveller is this. Do not spend 
your six weeks thus: a day in Liverpool; three 
days in London ; a night at Amiens ; three days 
in Paris ; a day in Brussels ; a day in Antwerp ; a 
day in Cologne ; two days on the Rhine ; a day in 
Lucerne ; three days in seeing the Bernese Ober- 
land ; a day at Milan ; a day in Verona ; two days 
in Venice ; a day in Bologna — and so on till you 
are sick of it. Concentrate your energies on one 
or two places^ and learn what they are driving at. 
You will get lasting good in this way out of even 
a poor six weeks ; and if you can ever manage to 
come again, you will begin where you left off, with 
redoubled interest. 



CHAPTER IV 

ENGLAND : THE COUNTRY 

TT will be seen from what I have said that I 
■*• regard England as in some respects the least 
important of European countries for Americans to 
visit. Reasonably, I think. It is too much like 
home; has too little of novelty. Nevertheless, a 
few weeks in England are valuable in their way, 
as giving some insight into the older world from 
which that of America is most largely derived, 
and as introducing the visitor to sites and places 
already familiar to him by name and historical 
association. 

I cannot, however, too often repeat that in 
England it is the country, not the towns (save 
the smallest), that deserve close attention. The 
American, coming from a land where the great 
towns are everything, and the country for the most 
part a mere agricultural reservoir, naturally thinks 
that he will find the best- things in Europe in the 
great cities. " We have country enough, and 
beautiful country, at home," my American friends 



England: The Country 41 

often say to me ; " but we have not the works of 
art the great cities can show us." That is true for 
Europe generally ; it is not quite so true for Eng- 
land in particular. I do not indeed advise the 
visitor to spend much, if any, of his time in ex- 
ploring Switzerland, the Tyrol, the Scotch High- 
lands, the Welsh hills; still less in tramping 
through the Hartz, the Black Forest, the Ardennes, 
the Carpathians. They will show him little he 
could not find in Maine or Massachusetts. If he 
goes to Italy, he should see Florence and Venice, 
not the Apennines and the Abruzzi ; he may visit 
Perugia, Siena, Orvieto, Cortona, perched " like 
eagle's nests " on their upland crags, but need not 
trouble to waste his valuable time over mere hills 
and valleys. The portion of the Italian country 
that falls inevitably under his eye on the outskirts 
of the great towns or during the journeys between 
them will amply suffice to afford him a fair mental 
picture of the vineyards, orchards, and gardens of 
Italy. But in England it is far otherwise. The 
towns are uninteresting, modern, and industrial ; it 
is the country that is antique, distinctive, and 
beautiful. 

And when I say the country, I do not mean to 
use the word in the purely rustic sense, as applied 
to the agricultural land, but in that wider accep- 



42 The European Tour 

tation, familiar to Englishmen, which calls every- 
thing " the country " that is not London, London 
itself is dull, gloomy, foggy, unpoetical. (I shall 
have more to say hereafter in partial modification 
of this sweeping disparagement.) As to the very 
large trading and manufacturing towns — the towns 
whose names are best known to Americans — they 
are almost all quite destitute of aesthetic or histori- 
cal attractions for the tourist. There is nothing, 
outside business, to detain any stranger in Liver- 
pool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, 
Newcastle, Leicester, or Nottingham ; still less in 
the naval and military towns, like Chatham and 
Portsmouth, or in such grisly seaports as South- 
ampton, Hull, and Cardiff. What is really most 
beautiful and noteworthy in England is to be found 
in the smaller historical towns, like Chester and 
Warwick, Stratford-on-Avon and Winchester, and 
more particularly in the cathedral cities, foremost 
among which I would certainly place Salisbury, 
Lincoln, Peterborough, Ely, York, and Canterbury. 
Furthermore, it is not only these smaller towns 
themselves, but the fields and farms and parks and 
houses around them that are typically English. 
Other countries in Europe can easily surpass Eng- 
land in every other respect ; France has nobler 
churches ; the Rhineland grander and more roman- 



England: The Country 43 

tic castles; the cities of Flanders have quainter 
streets and more exquisite town-halls ; Italy has 
painting and sculpture and architecture and minor 
arts in infinitely greater profusion. But what 
England has of distinctive and unapproachable is 
beyond cavil its country ; its close-cropped lawns, 
its immemorial rook-haunted elms, its hedges of 
hawthorn, its garden-like meadows, its village 
steeples embowered in trees, its Elizabethan manor- 
houses, its sweet air of ancient peace, its clinging 
mantle of ivy. The very dampness of the climate 
adds a picturesqueness of greenery to its -mediaeval 
ruins; the wealth of its landed families has pre- 
served for its fields a charming interspersal of 
august timber and a paternal care for rustic beauty 
hardly dreamt of elsewhere. 

I would say, then, to the American traveller, 
make your first acquaintance with Europe in the 
country in England. 

If you land at Liverpool, two places lie easily on 
your way to London, which the common consent 
of Americans has justly picked out as well worthy 
of your attention. The first is Chester, reached 
by rail in about forty minutes from Liverpool. 
This is such a charming town that if you take my 
advice you will go on there direct, without stop- 
ping at all in Liverpool itself, so as to spend your 



* 



' 



44 The European Tour 

first night in England at Chester. (You may take 
it for granted that at all places I mention there are 
first-class hotels, unless I say to the contrary.) 
Chester is still more or less surrounded by its an- 
cient walls, and is remarkable for its numerous 
old half-timbered houses, built in a style peculiar 
to the place, and affording room for what are called 
" The Rows " — an institution quite unknown 
elsewhere. In the principal streets, the ground 
floor of the houses is occupied by shops ; but the 
first floor (or second story) is entirely removed, so 
as to form an arcade, along which the foot-passen- 
ger walks, as in a covered gallery. As Chester 
has also a cathedral (though a small and unimpor- 
tant one), it is a capital place in which to form a 
first impression of England. 

The second point on the way to London from 
Liverpool is the group of towns about Warwick 
and Leamington. The hotel accommodation is bet- 
ter at the last-mentioned ; and as the two towns lie 
quite close to one another (almost touching on 
their outskirts), it does not much matter which of 
the two you choose as your stopping-place. They 
are about three hours by rail from Liverpool, and 
may also be easily reached from Chester. The 
Great Western route runs through prettier and 
more characteristic scenery than the London and 



England: The Country 45 

North Western. A couple of nights are quite 
enough for Chester ; but three or four days will 
not suffice to exhaust the interest and beauty of 
the Warwick neighbourhood. 

In the first place, there is Warwick town itself, 
with its quaint old streets and its antique air ; and 
then, there is Warwick Castle, one of the noblest 
mediaeval fortresses in England, almost unique 
among buildings of its size and age in being still 
inhabited. The great pile itself and the river at 
the base form one of the most beautiful little 
pictures in England ; within, the combination of 
smooth English sward and modern occupation (it 
is the home of Lord Warwick) with the frowning 
fierceness of the Plantagenet architecture is curi- 
ously attractive. The town itself is rich in early 
domestic architecture, and has two of its ancient 
gates, with oratories above their archways ; while 
the superb Beauchamp Chapel in St. Mary's 
Church is a magnificent monument of late Gothic 
art. But to my mind the most charming thing 
near Warwick is the footpath across the fields from 
Leamington, — a true English footpath, leading 
through lush meadows near the river-side, and 
bringing you suddenly in sight of Guy's Cliff House, 
an Elizabethan mansion in a most romantic situa- 
tion, high perched on a crag, and looking down 



46 The European Tour 

into a pool beside an ancient mill-stream. The 
whole combination is delicious. I once took two 
American girls for a walk across that path, after a 
European tour of some duration, the day before 
they were to sail for America ; and as they 
reached Guy's Cliff they turned to my wife and 
exclaimed, u Why, up till now we have never 
seen England ! " Better see it first than last, with- 
out wasting so much time on it. 

From Leamington as a centre, many other most 
interesting spots may be visited. It is a short 
drive to the ruins of Kenilworth Castle, which 
shows such a building in its ruined condition as 
Warwick shows it still repaired and inhabited. 
Then Coventry is not far, with its glorious churches, 
better reached by the charming shady road than 
by rail; and Stratford-on-Avon is a short day's ex- 
cursion — Stratford-on-Avon, with its sweet spire 
and its old-world air, only spoiled for the tourist 
by the perpetual intrusion of that ineffable bore, 
William Shakespeare. By which I mean only 
that Stratford, which is well worth visiting on its 
own account, is too obtrusively pervaded by cheap 
memorials of its one great citizen. If you go by 
road, instead of taking the train, you pass Charlcote 
Lucy, where fallow deer still graze, and get a 
further good picture of this true rural England. 



England: The Country 47 

You will understand, of course, that I am here 
engaged merely in giving hints, and that you will 
need on the spot a local guide-book. I may per- 
haps undertake one in time for this English tour ; 
meanwhile, Murray's Guides may be confidently 
recommended. 

Tourists from Liverpool who have stopped 
either at Leamington or Chester can break their 
journey Londonwards once more at Oxford. And 
indeed, whatever route you adopt, from whatever 
port of entry, you must sooner or later turn up in 
the University city. Oxford is the one thing in 
England which no American who values his soul 
should leave unseen on whatever consideration. 
It is unique in the world, like Venice. London 
you may see or not, as you please ; but you must 
see Oxford. You cannot forego it. Indeed, I 
have spent my life in inducing Americans to go 
to Oxford ; and I never knew one who did not 
thank me for sending him there. 

To Oxford you must go, then, sooner or later. 
Its magnificent group of colleges and of university 
buildings is unequalled in the world ; their beauty 
is as remarkable as their historical interest. If 
you can afford the time, three or four days should 
be devoted to Oxford ; Murray's Guide will tell 
you well what to see ; but there is also an admir- 



48 The European Tour 

able little handbook by Mr. Goldwin Smith, less 
formal and more informing. The most important 
sights are Magdalen, Christ Church, New College, 
and Oriel ; but filial affection compels me to add 
that my own college, Merton, has a beautiful 
chapel and a very ancient library ; while St. John's, 
Jesus, and Wadham also possess some charming 
features. You should not omit to take a turn 
round Christ Church Meadows nor to row down 
the river for the sight of the boats, with their 
many-hued occupants, and the barges by the side, 
ranged in rows as club-houses along the bank of 
the Isis. This curious picture of English aristo- 
cratic youth has no parallel elsewhere (except at 
Cambridge). If possible, you should visit it dur- 
ing the summer term — that is to say in May or 
June. Before July the colleges have " gone 
down," and you will see but the empty shell of 
the great university. 

No visitor to Oxford should forget to row down 
to Iffley, in order to land and see Iffley church — a 
little Norman gem, forming, with its churchyard, 
old yew, and river, an indelible impression. 

Those who can spare the time should certainly 
go from Oxford to London by row-boat, at least 
as far as Maidenhead, whence rail in an hour. 
The Thames affords a delicious picture of the 



England: The Country 49 

ancient river-valley civilisation of England ; it was 
long the main highway of trade and pleasure, and 
its banks were fringed by a constant succession of 
abbeys, convents, and castles, now mostly dis- 
mantled, ruined, or modernised. Still, the views 
are characteristically English ; the country is itself 
an artificial product, with its hedges and copses ; 
and here and there the visitor comes upon such 
remains of medievalism as the gateway of Abing- 
don Abbey, the beautiful monastery church at 
Dorchester, the Abbey ruins at Reading, the ivy- 
covered remains of Medmenham Priory, the stately 
tower of Bisham Abbey, converted into a modern 
mansion, with its adjoining dower-house, and many 
other bits of charming English architecture. Be- 
sides, the banks are everywhere lined with lawns 
and mansions of the seventeenth or eighteenth 
century, affording typical glimpses of the aristo- 
cratic rural life of England. It must be borne in 
mind that while in America wealth congregates in 
great towns, in England the rich have only an 
unimportant street house in London, but live in 
the country, spending much time and thought on 
the beautiflcation of their estates ; so that whoever 
wishes really to understand England must go 
where the English people have produced their 
chief and most successful work of art — the 



50 The European Tour 

English country. Boats can be hired from Salter 
at Oxford. 

If you have not time for this entire trip, then I 
strongly recommend you to run down from Lon- 
don for the day to Maidenhead — it is an hour's 
journey, and the best day to see the river life in 
full swing is Sunday. Take a ticket to Taplow 
station; then walk to Maidenhead Bridge, where 
hire a boat and row up stream at least as far as 
Cookham; if possible, as Marlow. In this way 
you will catch a sight of the estate of Cliveden, 
lately bought from the Duke of Westminster by 
Mr. W. W. Astor, as well as of the highly charac- 
teristic village of Cookham; if you continue to 
Marlow, you can also take in Bisham Abbey, with 
the surrounding buildings, which strike a keynote 
in English scenery. 

So much for the route via Liverpool. If you 
land at Southampton, the most accessible objects of 
the first importance on your route are Winchester 
and Salisbury. Both are well worth visiting. 

Winchester lies on the direct route to London, 
and has a cathedral, not quite of the first rank, but 
exceedingly interesting. It has also one of the 
great English public schools, of mediaeval date — 
a "public school" in England meaning one for the 
upper classes, not a " common school," which is 



England: The Country 51 

known as a Board School. The mediaeval charity 
of St. Cross is likewise well worth a visit ; and the 
town as a whole is an admirable specimen of the 
sleepy ancient cathedral cities of England. One 
night will suffice to see hastily all there is to see ; 
and when I say one night, I always mean to imply 
that portions of the day before and after it must be 
devoted to sight-seeing. Murray's Guide contains 
a good account of this fine old town, which under 
the later Saxon kings was for a couple of centuries 
or more the capital of England. 

Salisbury lies a little on one side of the direct 
route to London, but may be reached in an hour; 
the way thence is by a main line, with frequent 
fast trains; indeed, you will find everywhere in 
England many trains a day at all convenient hours. 
Salisbury is a town of the first importance, from 
the point of view of the tourist. Its exquisite 
cathedral^ standing alone in its smooth green close, 
forms the most perfect example of the English 
ideal in this direction. Its architecture, though 
much marred by modern scraping and tinkering, 
(like almost everything else in England), is still 
lovely and impressive ; its tone of feeling is un- 
surpassed anywhere. Besides the cathedral, the 
town itself is quaint and old-fashioned ; the domes- 
tic architecture is interesting ; and some of the old 



52 The European Tour 

gates which shut off the Cathedral Close from the 
rest of the city are still standing. Then Stonehenge, 
the most gigantic prehistoric monument in the 
world, lies within reach of an easy drive ; and if 
you can afford two or three days here, you can 
spend them pleasantly at Wilton, Amesbury, and 
other towns of the neighbourhood. Only by thus 
devoting some time to the country towns can you 
hope to enter into the inner heart of England. 

Those who land at Southampton, as well as 
those who land at Liverpool, must not neglect 
Oxford, the one inevitable sight in England. It 
can be reached from London direct in an hour and 
a half; the railway runs in part along the Thames, 
and affords glimpses at times of Windsor Castle. 
Third-class carriages on English railways are cheap 
and comfortable : anybody can travel by them. 

For those who are not satisfied with these hasty 
glimpses of English life, I will mention in addition 
a few other places well worth a visit. And first, 
near London itself. Canterbury cathedral is one of 
the finest and certainly the most historical of our 
old churches ; it is the site of the earliest English 
bishopric, and it still retains many pious memorials 
of the murdered archbishop, Thomas a Becket. 
It may be hastily seen in one day from London, 
returning the same night ; but I recommend 



England: The Country 53 

rather a night at Canterbury. Rochester^ which you 
pass on your way, has a tolerable cathedral and a 
Norman castle ; they form a picturesque group as 
seen from the railway, but I do not recommend a 
visit ; their beauty has been choked by the engulfing 
squalor of the modern military town of Chatham. 
As a rule, each diocese in England answers to an 
old English kingdom, or to one of its divisions; 
Kent, the kingdom of Athelwulf, the first Christian 
convert, has two cathedrals, — Canterbury for the 
East Kentings, who were mainly Teutonic, and 
Rochester for the West Kentings, of mixed 
Teutonic and Celtic ancestry. I merely mention 
this fact in passing, as one of the little historical 
points which often cast so vivid a sidelight upon 
European arrangements. Cambridge can also 
be visited with ease from London. As a whole, 
it is far less beautiful and picturesque than Oxford ; 
but it has one building, King's College Chapel, 
more perfect in its way than any one building 
at the sister university; and one coup d'ceil^ 
the view from " The Backs," which cannot be 
equalled as a town prospect anywhere in Britain. 
If you visit Cambridge, you must sleep there at 
least a couple of nights ; and then you can run 
over to Ely — a few minutes by rail — and see 
one of the noblest of English cathedrals, with 



54 The European Tour 

an interior nowhere surpassed for richness and 
magnificence. 

Scotland is not a part of England ; and to include 
it under the same heading is to bring down upon 
one's devoted head the lasting wrath of four millions 
of Scotsmen. Still, from the practical point of 
view of the American tourist, the two parts of 
Great Britain may fairly be run into one ; and I 
will therefore venture to add here (at the risk of my 
life) a few hints on travel in the northern region. 
Those visitors who land at Liverpool or who sail 
for Glasgow direct may find it desirable to go at 
once to Scotland. If so, they should first make 
straight for Edinburgh. The capital of Scotland is 
not unique in the world, like Oxford and Venice ; 
but it is unique in Britain. It is the one old city on 
the island which possesses both natural and artificial 
beauty. The Castle, St. Giles's, Holyrood Palace, 
Holyrood Abbey, the steep streets of the Old Town, 
the picturesque front of Princes Street, all combine 
to give it a rare union of advantages. And while 
you are in Edinburgh you should not omit a visit 
to Rosslyn Chapel, perhaps the most remarkable and 
satisfying piece of architecture in all Scotland. 

Most visitors, however, will doubtless proceed 
to Scotland from London. For these, it is possible 
to break the journey at three points at least of 



England: The Country 55 

singular interest. All three lie on the Great 
Northern Railway. Peterborough is only an hour 
from " town " — " town " meaning to all English- 
men London ; it has a magnificent cathedral, which 
however will be spoilt for the tourist for some 
years to come by the scaffolding of the destroyers 
commonly described as " restorers." York is the 
most convenient point at which to break the 
journey ; and York Minster ranks high in beauty 
among English cathedrals. The town itself, too, 
the capital of Roman Britain, still retains most of 
its mediaeval walls and gates ; while its ancient 
streets are full of delightful and quaint old houses. 
It is well worth seeing. But if you mean to stop at 
only one place on the way to Edinburgh, by ail means 
let that place be Durham. Here alone in England 
do you get the great cathedral and the prince- 
bishop's castle perched side by side on a defensible 
rock, as in the Rhine country and Switzerland ; 
the ecclesiastical chief was also a temporal ruler, 
and his army repelled the attacks of the raiding 
Scotsmen. The position of the vast cathedral 
on a lofty crag overlooking the river is extremely 
picturesque ; the solid Norman grandeur and 
gloominess of its interior live with one ever 
after. The Galilee or western porch is perhaps 
the loveliest bit of detail in England. A small 



56 The European Tour 

university now occupies the buildings of the 
bishop's castle. As a whole, I know of no town 
better adapted to put the visitor back at one glance 
into the England of the early Middle Ages. 

Do not stop anywhere else between London and 
Edinburgh ; but read up the route, which is strik- 
ing in parts, in any good guide-book. The Great 
Northern line in my judgment is far superior for 
the tourist to the Midland or the London and 
North Western. 

In Scotland, I do not recommend the passing 
traveller to do more than attempt one of two main 
routes. The first, a short one, gives him a glimpse 
of the Highlands, and is known as the Trossachs 
route. It can be fairly done in one long day from 
Edinburgh. Go by rail to Callender or Aberfoyle 
(I recommend the former); thence take coach to 
the Trossachs ; from that point go by steamer on 
Loch Katrine to Stronachlachar ; coach to Invers- 
naid ; steamer on Loch Lomond to Tarbet ; rail to 
Glasgow or Edinburgh. I advise rather sleeping 
at Glasgow (St. Enoch's Hotel, very well man- 
aged). This tour may, if preferred, be made in 
the opposite direction ; or if you like, you can start 
from Glasgow and return to Edinburgh. The trains, 
boats, and coaches correspond in both directions. 
The trip thus described consists almost entirely of 



England: The Country 57 

mere scenery; but it is characteristic, and gives 
glimpses of a few old castles and of some very 
marked sides of Scotch life and country. 

The other trip is longer, and requires three or 
four days at least to accomplish. It is generally 
known as the Caledonian Canal route. This ex- 
cursion is best done as follows. Start from Glas- 
gow, where you have slept on your return from 
the Trossachs excursion ; the steamboat leaves 
unpleasantly early ; you can dodge it by taking the 
first train to Greenock, and embarking there, 
which saves you the comparatively dull run down 
the Clyde from Glasgow. Thence through the 
Kyles of Bute (pretty enough in their way, but 
might be in America or anywhere else) and on to 
the Crinan Canal ; whence, still by steamer, to 
Oban, the capital of the West Highlands through 
sea lochs, pretty well guarded by islands. This 
day's journey gives you a good glimpse of the 
characteristic misty West Coast scenery ; it is apt 
to be showery. Sleep at Oban, which, in fine 
weather, is one of the loveliest spots in Britain. 
If fair next day — but that is a doubtful if — you 
may drive to see the few castles of the neighbour- 
hood, mere ruinous shells, but most picturesquely 
situated (Black's Guide will tell you all you want to 
know about them). Oban may also be reached by 



58 The European Tour 

rail from Glasgow or Edinburgh, not quite so pleas- 
antly, but by a beautiful route ; those who dislike 
the sea may diverge from the itinerary given above 
at Crinan, and take coach to Loch Awe, an inland 
lake, up which steam, and rail on to Oban. But 
the sea lochs and islands of the alternative road 
are more thoroughly characteristic of Scottish 
scenery. 

From Oban, steamer to Fort William or Ban- 
avie, where sleep. Do not trouble to ascend Ben 
Nevis. No mountain in the British Isles deserves 
an ascent, except at the feet of leisurely travellers. 
From Fort William, steamers will take you up 
the Caledonian Canal — in reality, a chain of 
mountain lakes occupying the centre of a great 
glen, and connected by canals — to Inverness, 
where sleep. This Caledonian Canal leads you 
through the wildest scenery in Britain ; but it is 
not characteristic of anything save the fierce High- 
land condition of the seventeenth century 5 a few 
castles alone break the monotony of its beautiful 
weirdness. On the whole, I do not consider the 
trip here described a very instructive one ; it is 
more like what one may see on Lake George and 
Lake Champlain, or in the Adirondack district, 
than distinctively British. Return to Edinburgh 
by the Highland Railway — a fine line, running 



England: The Country 59 

through the heart of the grouse-moors — and sleep, 
if you choose, at Fisher's Hotel at Pitlochry^ whence 
you can explore the Pass of Killiecrankie, the 
Falls of Tummel, and many other spots of some 
scenic interest. 

As a whole, you will see, I advise the six-monthly 
visitor, if he attacks Scotland at all, to see only 
Edinburgh and the Trossachs. But England is 
really much more novel and interesting ; it is the 
land of old civilisation in Britain ; its cathedrals, 
castles, and monasteries are on a larger scale, and 
have finer architecture. 

Briefly, my advice comes to this : spend most of 
whatever time you devote to Britain in exploring 
Southern England ; but if you take in Scotland 
as well, see Durham on the way, with York if you 
like ; and in Scotland, confine yourself to Edin- 
burgh and the Trossachs. 

One word incidentally about the attractions of 
these last. It is on a point of principle. Some 
people go to see the Trossachs because they are 
" the Land of Scott" and more particularly of "The 
Lady of the Lake." In my opinion, it is a great 
mistake for the tourist to fritter away time on " the 
Land of Scott," " the Land of Burns," " Char- 
lotte Bronte's country," and other such purely sen- 
timental associations. These do not in reality 



60 The European Tour 

teach you anything. The characteristic objects 
of a country — its churches, its halls, its painting, 
its sculpture, its historical sites and buildings — 
those have really lasting value and importance j 
mere sentimental associations do no good to any- 
body. They correspond to the blade of grass 
plucked from Wordsworth's grave, which might to 
all appearance have been plucked from any meadow 
anywhere. If a scoffer surreptitiously substitutes 
for it a blade of grass from Greenwood Cemetery or 
Boston Common, the owner himself would never 
know the difference. But there is a real distinction 
between Fountains Abbey or Hereford Cathedral or 
St. Mark's at Venice, and Trinity Church, New 
York ; they show you something the exact ana- 
logue of which you cannot possibly see elsewhere. 
Let me illustrate this misconception of the true 
use of travel by the plan pursued by two amiable 
young London clerks whom I once met on their 
way to Italy. They told me their proposed route, 
which seemed to me very ill-selected. I enquired 
why they had chosen so odd an itinerary. They 
answered that they were going to visit " all the 
towns in Italy mentioned by Shakespeare." Now, 
Shakespeare was an Elizabethan Englishman, who 
probably never travelled in Italy at all. In any 
case, he has no part in its history, its architecture, 



England: The Country 61 

its sculpture, its painting. The real object of go- 
ing to Italy should be to see the glorious native 
works at Florence, Rome, and Venice. The mere 
fanciful association of Shakespeare's plays with 
Italian towns is fallacious and misleading. So at 
Verona many misguided tourists go to deposit their 
visiting-cards in a Roman sarcophagus, falsely de- 
scribed as the tomb of Juliet — Juliet's very exist- 
ence being highly problematical. Now, that is 
clearly the wrong way of seeing things; the very 
people who weep over the sham tomb where Juliet 
never lay — the stone coffin, in all probability, of 
some sleek provincial Roman magistrate — most 
often omit seeing the church of San Zeno, a mile 
from the town, which is one of the most fascinat- 
ing examples of Romanesque architecture, and has 
a Madonna on its altar which may fairly be de- 
scribed as Mantegna's masterpiece.- They miss; 
the substance in grasping at the shadow. 

To return from this digression — which never- 
theless goes to the very root of the theory of sight- 
seeing — if you wish to learn more of England 
outside London, and have the time to spare for it, I 
should add the following hints as to the best points 
to visit : — 

Lincoln is the most interesting, taken all round, 
among English cathedrals. It can easily be com- 



62 The European Tour 

bined in a single short tour with Peterborough, Ely, 
York, and Durham. It stands up on its isolated 
hill, a church high-placed, dominating with its 
towers a wide and fertile plain, and has some fea- 
tures which cannot be seen to equal perfection 
anywhere else in England. Lichfield is also well 
worth seeing, and can be taken, if you choose, on 
the way from Liverpool to Leamington or Lon- 
don. Of the other cathedrals, Norwich and Wells 
are the best. It is sometimes useful to be told 
what you may omit : I add, therefore, that I do 
not think anybody need go out of his way to see 
Chichester, Gloucester, Worcester, Bristol, Here- 
ford, Carlisle, or Ripon. Truro is modern. But 
if you light upon them by chance, all are worth 
seeing 

The English watering-places are in some ways 
characteristic. Those who spend some part of 
the summer in England may wish to see them. 
Brighton is merely a suburb of London — a perfect 
London-on-Sea ; it has no picturesque interest. 
It is conveniently reached by rail ; the journey 
hardly exceeds an hour. Hastings is much more 
in the tourist's way ; it has a fine old castle, and a 
quaint fisher quarter ; Battle Abbey is within easy 
distance. Eastbourne has access to two good cas- 
tles. Of the East Coast watering-places, avoid 



England: The Country 63 

Ramsgate, Margate, and Yarmouth ; they are the 
English Coney Island. Cromer is picturesque, and 
has a fine old church. Scarborough, in Yorkshire, 
rather remote from London, is fashionable and 
pretty, with a ruined castle. Whitby is the most 
pleasant and picturesque of all, well situated among 
the dells of the Yorkshire moors, with a ruined 
abbey, and a funny old fisher-town clambering 
steeply up the cliff towards the church and mon- 
astery. Prices at all these are very high in the 
season. Lyme Regis in Dorset is a good specimen 
of the old-fashioned sleepy seaside town, almost 
unaltered since the days of Miss Austen's novels. 

Of inland watering-places, Buxton and Matlock, 
both in Derbyshire, are pretty, and afford access 
to the beautiful though quietly hilly scenery of 
the Peak. They are good centres for exploring 
the country about Chatsworth and Haddon Hall. 
The former, the seat of the wealthy Duke of 
Devonshire, is a typical example of the stately 
homes of the English peerage. Malvern, Bath, 
Cheltenham, and Ilkley have also points in their 
favour. 

Those who wish to see rural England a little 
more fully may take an extended tour either in Dev- 
onshire or Yorkshire. I do not say that either is 
exciting ; but they are calmly beautiful and full of the 



64 The European Tour 

restful English feeling ; they will certainly tell you 
far more about England and the English people than 
a month or six weeks wasted in foggy and stifling 
London. For a Yorkshire tour I recommend the 
following route : York (two nights) with its Min- 
ster, town walls, gates, St. Mary's Abbey, etc. ; 
then Bolton Abbey, where there is a nice little inn 
for one night's stay ; Harrogate, a fashionable in- 
land watering-place j Ripon for Ripon Minster, 
Fountains Abbey, and Studley Royal ; by rail to 
Masham, and thence by carriage or on foot towards 
Richmond, passing on the way Jervaulx Abbey, 
Middleham Castle, and Leyburn ; thence the road 
winds across wild moors to Richmond itself, with 
its finely placed castle ; so on to Whitby ; next, to 
Scarborough ; and if you like, finish off" your trip 
with Beverley Minster. This is one of the richest 
architectural and antiquarian tours in England, 
affording you also good glimpses of the dales and 
rivers as well as of the heather-clad moors of 
Yorkshire, which are at their purplest and best in 
August or early September. 

The Devonshire tour is less varied and interest- 
ing, but not perhaps less charming. It exhibits 
the quiet and peaceful characteristics of rural Eng- 
land in their utmost development. It is capital for 
the pedestrian. A good skeleton tour would be, 



England: The Country 65 

Exeter (cathedral and castle) ; Teignmouth ; Tor- 
quay ; Dartmouth ; Totnes ; Ivybridge ; Plymouth 
Tavistock; Okehampton ; Torrington; Bideford 
Barnstaple; Ilfracombe ; Lynton and Lynmouth 
Minehead ; London. This takes you simply 
through old towns and villages, with smooth turf, red 
cliffs, ancient churches, moss-grown farmhouses, 
but lacks distinct antiquarian interest save at a few 
points, for details of which I must refer you to 
Murray's Devonshire. 

Finally, my last word is this : if you see England 
at all, see mainly the country. That is the sweetest 
and best in England. The towns, at least the 
large ones, are, as Cobbett said, " wens." The 
country is the most smiling and garden-like in 
Europe. If it were mere fields, I would not 
recommend you to see it. But it is an artificial 
product, the one really admirable artistic outcome 
of the British idiosyncrasy. To go to England 
and omit seeing the country is like going to Italy 
and omitting to see the pictures and the churches. 



CHAPTER V 

LONDON 

' | v O my mind, most Americans spend alto- 
-*• gether too long a time in London. I believe 
they usually regret it afterwards. That is not un- 
natural, either way. As a rule, visitors come first 
in their tour to London, and are anxious to see 
the sites and buildings with which their historical 
reading has made them familiar. Everything con- 
spires to make them stop there. They speak the 
language ; they understand the ways ; they settle 
down in a comfortable (though ruinously expen- 
sive) hotel or lodging-house ; and they are loath to 
move till they have exhausted the fresh interest 
of the teeming city of Five Million inhabitants. 
Afterwards they go on to France, Belgium, or Italy, 
and are sorry they did not assign to these vastly 
more interesting and amusing countries the margin 
of holiday which they wasted on the attractions of 
that gloomy siren. 

To those who want to make the most of their 
time, however, I would say, on the contrary, hurry 



London 67 

away from London as fast as possible, and go on to 
the Continent. If 'after you have seen Paris, Bruges, 
Cologne, Florence, Venice, Rome, Munich, and 
Dresden, you still feel you want to spend more time 
in the smoky metropolis of the world's business, go 
back there by all means ; in any case go back for a 
week or a fortnight : but give the pick of Europe a 
chance at any rate, before you fling away your 
time with reckless extravagance on what is least 
important. 

Of course I am writing from the point of view 
of the tourist. There are those who desire to see a 
London season. I have never seen one ; therefore I 
can tell you nothing about it. There are those 
who desire to hob-a-nob with dukes. I never set 
eyes on a duke in my life, and somehow I do not 
hanker after the joy of beholding one. There are 
those who wish to marry their daughters to Eng- 
lish peers. If they are content with such usually 
undesirable sons-in-law, — if they think a title will 
console a woman for probable neglect and possible 
cruelty, — they may go their own way ; I cannot 
aid them in getting introductions to a society which 
I have never had the curiosity myself to penetrate. 
For people with these peculiar social aims, a long 
stay in London is, I doubt not, desirable. But my 
book is not for them, either. I aim only at advis- 



68 The European Tour 

ing the sincere tourist who wants Europe, as I 
want it myself, for the sake of what it enfolds 
of beautiful or ennobling, how best to use his time 
to his soul's advantage. 

To him, then, or to her, I would say — Spend 
not more than a week at the outside in London before 
proceeding to the Continent. In that week see 
mainly London itself, not its foreign collections. 
And London itself, apart from its collections, is 
easily seen. It lies in a nutshell. It has few ob- 
jects of antiquity, few buildings of interest. The 
few there are I will proceed to note in what seems 
to me the best order for seeing them. 

London City, as I have said already, — the old 
mediaeval London, — was almost entirely burnt 
down in the reign of Charles II. Hence it now 
contains hardly anything of interest. But that 
older and truer nucleus, still known as " The 
City," and still alone possessed of its Lord Mayor 
and Corporation, forms but a tiny patch in the 
centre of the vast heterogeneous agglomerate now 
popularly and irregularly described as London. If 
you start from the West End, and drive through 
Kensington past Hyde Park for miles, you are still 
outside the utmost verge of the City. Continue 
on down Piccadilly, Regent Street, and the Strand, 
for many minutes more, and you have never even 



London 69 

approached the true City of London. Not till you 
reach the Griffin, which occupies with its unspeak- 
able ugliness the spot where Temple Bar, one of 
the old city gates, once stood, are you really in 
London. The rest is just the outskirts. But 
these outskirts, with their four or five million in- 
habitants (as against 70,000 in the City) have 
within recent years for the first time gained 
municipal rights and official recognition as a sort 
of complex town, having been provided with a 
County Council, and erected into the administra- 
tive County of London. When people say 
u London " in ordinary talk, they mean, as a rule, 
this wider area ; when they wish to refer to the 
original nucleus, with its Lord Mayor and Corpo- 
ration, they say " The City." Thus, the City in 
London does not mean at all what it means in 
New York or Chicago ; — that we call " town ; " 
— it means only a tiny kernel in the very centre, 
yet lying so far east of the fashionable world that 
many ladies who have lived in London nearly all 
their lives have never been near it. It is the 
wider London, then, that I proceed to deal with in 
the present chapter. 

In that greater London, the most interesting and 
almost the only relic of antiquity is undoubtedly 
Westminster Abbey. This I advise you to see as 



70 The European Tour 

soon as you have made your first walks through 
the town, and learnt to orient yourself. Go 
there more than once, reading it carefully up in 
your Baedeker's London. It is the one important 
mediaeval church in the modern metropolis. Ed- 
ward the Confessor built it, but not as you see it. 
Henry III. pulled down his minster, to do him 
honour, and erected the existing church over the 
glorious tomb-shrine of his sainted predecessor. 
Henry VII. added his own exquisite chapel. 
Whatever little remains of English history is to be 
seen at Westminster. 

After "the Abbey," I should say see the town 
itself; by which I mean mainly, the West End, 
especially the quarter about Charing Cross, the 
hotels near which are by far the most central. 
The things to notice here lie quite on the surface 
— Trafalgar Square, the Strand and Fleet Street, 
the Temple, the Embankment, Regent Street, 
Oxford Street, Bond Street, the shopping quarter. 
In all these you need only walk about, though a 
few objects, such as the Temple Church, deserve 
closer inspection. The quarter has little to rec- 
ommend it except its solid air of life and business ; 
it is calmly, unobtrusively, and respectably British. 
It does not aspire to architecture; but ladies will 
find it has claims of its own on the score of drapery. 



London 71 

Of the parks, the three which lie together — St. 
James's, Green Park, and Hyde Park — are worth 
walking through. So is the parliamentary region 
about Westminster, with its big modern offices 
and its bad-Gothic Parliament House. This dis- 
trict has a few older buildings, such as the Ban- 
queting Hall in Whitehall. But it relies for the 
most part on its historical associations. I do not 
advise you to waste time which you will want else- 
where on being led by an attendant over the House 
of Commons or going laboriously through any 
of the tedious sights of Westminster, except the 
Abbey. 

The northern area you may entirely neglect. It 
contains nothing of interest. Regent's Park is not 
worth a visit, except for. the sake of the Zoologi- 
cal Gardens — popularly, " the Zoo " — and even 
those need not be seen by any save children and 
specialists. All the northern region is entirely 
modern, stucco-built, and repellent. 

A trip should, however, be undertaken into the 
City, just for the sake of seeing it. Go by Fleet 
Street, Ludgate Hill, and St. Paul's. The cathe- 
dral, Wren's, need not detain you for more than a 
walk round it, inside and out : it is vast, bare, 
pretentious, unimpressive. The monuments are 
nightmares. Then continue on by Cheapside to 



72 The European Tour 

the Bank and the Royal Exchange, returning by 
Holborn, Oxford Street, and Regent Street. The 
City still contains a few moderately interesting 
buildings, the best of which are the Guildhall, the 
Charterhouse, Christ's Hospital, and St. Bartholo- 
mew's, Smithfield. But even these, though illus- 
trative enough of old London, and so locally 
interesting, are not to be compared in richness or 
beauty to the similar buildings in France, Belgium, 
and Italy, or to those of Oxford and the country 
towns of England. The one thing, to my mind, 
that makes London worth seeing is the mere fact 
that here you stand in the largest centre of popula- 
tion on earth, the focus of universal business and 
finance, the capital of the world-wide British em- 
pire. Architecturally and artistically, London has 
done nothing in any way worthy of its commercial 
supremacy. It ought to be as fine as fifty Venices : 
it has not one St. Mark's, one Doges' Palace. 

The palaces, indeed, are naught ; but the club- 
houses in Pall Mall betoken wealth, unguided by 
taste or skill to use it. 

I do not deny you the right to visit once or 
twice at this stage the sole really valuable contents 
of London — its collections ; though I advise you to 
postpone their systematic study till your return 
from the Continent. Still, a glimpse on your first 



London 73 

visit may not be wholly undesirable ; it will help 
at least to show you there is something to see in 
London. Pre-eminent among these collections are 
those of the British Museum, the National Gallery, 
and the South Kensington Museum. 

The British Museum proper — that is to say, the 
department of Antiquities — is situated in a gloomy 
and depressed-looking building in the quarter 
known as Bloomsbury. (Observe, by the way, 
that London is a country, made up of different 
towns, each with its own name and its separate 
physiognomy.) On a first visit or so, you will 
find the following the most interesting objects in 
this gigantic congeries. The Greek Sculpture ; this 
is exceedingly rich indeed ; it has some good very 
early objects (the Harpy Tomb, the Branchidae 
figures, etc.), and above all, it has the sculpture 
from the Parthenon at Athens the famous Elgin 
Marbles), the finest Greek work of the best period. 
(A comprehensive general Guide to the Museum 
is sold at the door ; for those who want to pursue 
the subject further, there is a splendid Handbook 
of the Greek Sculpture in two volumes.) The 
Roman Sculpture, principally busts and statues of 
Emperors and their families. The Egyptian Collec- 
tion, extremely rich and valuable ; the general 
catalogue will here suffice for all save specialists. 



74 The European Tour 

The Assyrian Collection^ the richest in the world ; 
at least a few hours should be devoted to a cursory 
examination of the magnificent reliefs. The 
Greek Vases and minor objects of antiquity. The 
Etruscan Collection. The Ethnographical Objects. 
Pre-historic Antiquities. Coins and Medals. And 
many others. The mere enumeration of these de- 
partments is enough to suggest the immensity of the 
collections, any one of which would be the study 
of a lifetime. The British Museum is indeed a 
place to despair in — or else to saunter through 
carelessly, with a glance right and left at what 
happens to catch your eye or take your fancy. 
Personally, I find the archaic Greek objects, the 
Lycian tombs, the colossal sculptures of the Mau- 
soleum, and the beautiful set of Assyrian bas-reliefs 
representing Ashur-bani-pal lion-hunting, the most 
interesting exhibits. But to the average American 
visitor who comes to Europe in search of the 
means of a more advanced culture, I should say 
the Greek and Roman Sculpture is the most im- 
portant object of special study in this museum. I 
must add that a certain blight of inexplicable shab- 
biness hangs somehow over the vast collection; 
whether it is the gloom of Bloomsbury, the want 
of space in the galleries, the hap-hazard mode of 
acquisition, or what, I know not; but certainly, 



London j$ 

for some mysterious reason, the objects here ex- 
hibited are far less interesting, relatively to their 
intrinsic scientific and artistic worth, than those of 
the Louvre, the Vatican, the Munich galleries, or 
any other great European museum. Dinginess 
and stinginess are everywhere conspicuous. Some- 
thing must no doubt be attributed to the exigencies 
of space; something to the niggardliness of the 
British people and the British government, who, 
rich as they are, have always grudged money for 
literary, scientific, or artistic purposes. 

As for the library, with its vast collection of 
printed books and manuscripts, — the largest in the 
world, — that is for readers and students ; the pass- 
ing visitor is permitted the barest glimpse of it — 
and rightly. 

The Natural History Collections of the British 
Museum are now housed in a totally distinct build- 
ing, some two miles off, at South Kensington. 
They are the richest in the world, and will of 
course be visited by all scientific travellers ; but 
the general tourist will doubtless feel satisfied with 
a perfunctory walk through the long rows of ad- 
mirably arranged glass cases. The collection con- 
sists of four departments, — Zoology, Botany, 
Geology, Mineralogy. 

Second in importance to the British Museum 



y6 The European Tour 

comes the National Gallery, by far the most in- 
teresting sight in London for the non-specialist 
tourist. Alone among the collections of the 
metropolis, this show has escaped that blight of 
congenital gloom and dulness that seems to hang 
over everything else in London. Though housed in 
a mean and ugly building, it is admirably arranged 
and very well lighted ; while the ability to move 
about the chairs so as to sit freely before whatever 
picture you fancy is a great advantage, unknown 
in almost any Continental picture gallery. The 
National Gallery is not rich in works by the 
greatest artists ; it has few pictures of the first 
rank by painters of the first order; either the 
paintings are good specimens of second-rate masters 
or else second-rate specimens of great ones. But 
the collection is illustrative, well displayed, and 
admirably adapted to the wants of the student ; if 
visited after you have seen the Italian and Flemish 
collections, it will greatly help to crystallise and 
clear your conceptions of the characteristics of the 
chief schools of painting. 

Three sets of pictures in the National Gallery 
deserve especial notice, — the Italian, the Flemish, 
and the English. The Italian Schools are all rep- 
resented, though none of them by quite their best 
works. The paintings, in short, constitute on the 



London 77 

whole a scratch collection. But it is a very com- 
prehensive one. The Tuscans are represented by 
a tolerable Botticelli, a good unfinished Michael 
Angelo, a charming Filippo Lippi, and a doubtful 
Leonardo ; while several works of minor artists 
have great merit. The Venetians are better vouched 
for, perhaps, than any other great school by a fine 
Titian, a good Veronese, and many excellent 
works by lesser masters ; while the pictures of the 
second-rate men, such as Moroni and Moretto, 
Girolamo dai Libri and Cavazzola, are among the 
best things in the British collection. The Um- 
brians, on the other hand, are only so-so; the 
Blenheim Madonna by Raphael being destitute 
of most of his finest qualities, while there is but 
one first-rate Perugino, a glorious St. Michael in 
celestial armour. The small Ferrarese and Bolognese 
collection, however, is rich in good things, and 
thoroughly characteristic of that least interesting 
of Italian schools. An altar-piece by the almost 
unknown Ercole di Giulio Grandi must rank as 
one of the finest paintings in the gallery. The 
Paduan school has a beautiful Mantegna, and a 
quite unequalled set of the works of that quaint 
and charming painter, Carlo Crivelli. Among the 
Lombard examples by far the finest is Borgognone's 
Madonna with the two St. Catherines. 



78 The European Tour 

The Flemish painters are but fairly represented. 
Out and away the best work here — to my mind 
the most wholly pleasing picture in the entire gallery 
— is Gerard David's beautiful portrait of a kneeling 
canon with his patron saints. The Van Eyck 
close by, though exquisitely painted, is uninteresting 
as a picture ; the best thing in it is the decorative 
adjuncts. Several of the others are charming and 
delicate. 

Many of the old German pictures are first-rate 
examples. 

The Dutch are well represented for those who 
like them. There is a fine Franz Hals, a good 
Rembrandt, and a fair Vandyck or two. The 
later Flemings, whose affinities lie here, are well 
exhibited by Rubens's Chapeau de Poil, one of the 
best in the second rank of his portraits. 

Of the English, works, naturally, the most in- 
teresting are the Reynoldses and the Gainsboroughs. 
And then, there are the Turners. 

To my mind, the best of all the pictures in this 
gallery is the Gerard David — he never did better. 
After it I would place in order of merit the Bor- 
gognone, the Mantegna, Moroni's Tailor, Filippo 
Lippi's Annunciation, Francia's Pieta, the Franz 
Hals, and the Ercole di Giulio Grandi. It will 
be noticed that few of these names are of the first 



London 79 

class. The gallery, in short, has some magnificent 
works of second-rate men, but (outside the English 
school) few transcendent works of first-rate ones. 

The Official Catalogue is good and instructive ; 
there is also a capital Handbook (not sold in the 
building) by Mr. E. T. Cook, which exactly meets 
the wants of the average reader. 

The third great collection of London is the 
South Kensington Museum. It is a rich, vast, 
chaotic gathering of miscellaneous objects of art — 
chiefly the minor arts — from all parts of the 
world, huddled loosely together in an exquisite 
jumble : it ought only to be studied in detail after 
you have seen Paris and Italy. The nemesis 
which pursues English government collections is 
nowhere more apparent, indeed, than in this ill- 
starred museum. The building has no facade, and 
looks like a wood-shed. Inside, its galleries are of 
all heights and sizes, well or ill adapted, as chance 
or fate rules, for the objects they exhibit. Noble 
originals are crowded and jostled by plaster casts 
or modern imitations : you never know whether 
you are looking at a first-hand masterpiece or a 
laborious copy till you consult the labels. Un- 
doubtedly, the collection contains some splendid 
and beautiful works of art ; but the effect of the 
whole is marred and spoiled by the almost entire 



80 The European Tour 

absence of anything like judicious selection or ar- 
rangement. In one word, South Kensington is 
a warehouse ; the Louvre and Cluny and the 
Bargello are museums. 

Nevertheless, this huge hotchpotch of things 
good, bad, and indifferent contains genuine works 
of high merit, in sufficient numbers to stock half a 
dozen provincial galleries. It has Raphael's car- 
toons — lent permanently by the Queen; it has 
fine Italian reliefs, Delia Robbia majolicas, Limoges 
enamels, exquisite glass and metal work, fine 
potteries of all ages, an endless collection of various 
articles of minor artistic interest. After you have 
learnt to understand these objects elsewhere, you 
can spend many interesting mornings in a single 
room at South Kensington, examining in detail the 
contents of the various cases. I must add in 
justice that the descriptive labels are the best I 
know in any museum in the world ; they render 
a catalogue unnecessary for any save advanced 
students. 

The India Museum, which occupies a separate 
building in the same district, is a branch of the 
South Kensington Museum. 

Naturally, there are many other collections in 
London of great scientific and artistic importance, 
but none which need be visited by the American 



London 81 

tourist. In all these matters my advice would be, 
do not waste time in seeing third-rate things in 
London, which you will want for seeing first-rate 
things in Paris, Munich, Venice, and Florence. 

A few words may be added as to things which you 
may safely omit. The Crystal Palace and Madame 
Tussaud's are good amusements for children, but 
are no more necessary for adults than the Pan- 
tomime. Windsor Castle, half an hour by rail, is 
ancient in form, but has been so much restored 
that it possesses little real interest. Hampton 
Court is somewhat better ; but I do not recommend 
you to go out of your way to see it. As for the 
theatres and other casual amusements of London, 
they are a matter of taste. Baedeker and the daily 
papers will tell you all about them. 

Finally, I shall once more have justified the 
existence of this little book if I have succeeded in 
making you feel why the country in England is so 
much more important than the town, and why you 
need spend so little time in London. It has one 
really good and local thing in it — Westminster 
Abbey. Even that you will understand better after 
you have seen Orcagna's shrine in Or San Michele 
at Florence. 

6 



CHAPTER VI 

FRANCE : PARIS 

JUST as distinctly as the country is England, 
Paris is France. 

Americans, accustomed to a great decentralised 
community, can hardly understand the absolute 
centralisation of everything French in Paris. In 
the United States, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, 
Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, and San Fran- 
cisco are separate entities ; they do not take their 
thought, their art, their laws entire from one 
another ; each has its own ideas, its own judg- 
ments, its own peculiar standards of life and con- 
duct. But in France Paris is everything. You 
are Parisian, or else you are provincial. Nine 
tenths of all that is worth seeing in the Republic 
lies within a mile of the He de la Cite. To most 
Parisians the universe does not extend beyond 
St. Germain. 

Hence I would say to the American who visits 
Europe, go to Paris straight from London, and 
spend most of the time you devote to France 
there. 



France: Paris 83 

Formerly Americans gave more time to Paris 
and less to London than is now usual. I think 
the older plan was the better one; the change is 
mostly due to social causes. "Fashionable" 
Americans who want to know marquises, spend 
some months in London ; other Americans who 
have too much good sense to desire such acquaint- 
ances, follow their footsteps by pure habit. But 
if you will take my advice, you will go first to the 
Continent ; you can then return to London later, 
should you think it worth while. I am not afraid, 
however, that you will think it worth while ; on 
the contrary, when you come to see how much 
there is to learn in France, Belgium, and (above 
all) Italy, you will thank me for having saved you 
from wasting your days in Piccadilly. 

As to a route from London to Paris, if you dis- 
like the sea, go by Dover and Calais, stopping one 
night on the way at Amiens, to see the Cathedral. 
There are good reasons for seeing it, if possible, 
before you visit Notre-Dame at Paris. Inspect it 
at leisure — there is nothing else at Amiens to de- 
tain you — neglect the little picture-gallery — so 
you can take your own time to look at the Cathe- 
dral thoroughly. The sculpture of the exterior is 
beautiful ; try to understand it. But by far the 
finest thing in the whole place (if you do not allow 



84 The European Tour 

yourself to be talked over by Mr. Ruskin) is the 
set of coloured stone reliefs at the back of the choir, 
in what is called the ambulatory. They relate the 
history of the two chief saints of the district. 
Those on the South Side tell the story of the local 
bishop, St. Firmin, the apostle of the Ambiani, the 
Romanised Celtic tribe from whom Amiens takes 
its name; and they deserve the closest attention. 
I mention them here, not because of any intrinsic 
importance, but because they are the first such 
works which the tourist will see, in all probability, 
and they should therefore be carefully examined as 
specimens of the sort of interest which is rife on 
the Continent. Here the Reformation has not 
swept away all continuity with the past; and 
in these naive scenes, sculptured from 1489 to 
1530, we get a charming glimpse of the manner in 
which the fifteenth century envisaged to itself the 
history of the early church in the days of the per- 
secutions. Not so much on account of their 
artistic merit, therefore (which, however, is great), 
as because they will form a good introduction to 
my treatment of the Continent generally, I will 
dwell for a while on these interesting sculptures. 

At a first glance you can see for yourself that 
they are quaint and beautiful. In composition and 
treatment they resemble the finest Flemish paint- 



France: Paris 85 

ings of their time ; and indeed, by whomever they 
were produced, they are essentially Flemish in 
spirit. Nor need I point out to you the delicious 
and almost childish simplicity of the style; the 
charmingly unconscious spectators who look out 
of the windows at the saint's martyrdom ; the noble 
ladies who disrobe completely to enter the sacred 
font of baptism. But what I wish to impress upon 
you here is the point that you must examine these 
scenes in detail, and try to remember them, for 
comparison with other similar scenes elsewhere. 
Don't walk past them with a lordly glance; spell 
them out and understand them. You will find as 
you go on that such representations are always 
more or less conventionalised, and that only by 
means of comparison can you rightly grasp their 
full meaning. I would also urge upon you to buy 
photographs of such works, whenever they interest 
you — not views of Amiens Cathedral as a whole, 
but separate photographs of each such incident in 
the life of St. Firmin. You can then employ them 
for collation with other like works elsewhere. 

Still more markedly is this the case with the series 
of reliefs on the North Side of the ambulatory, 
representing the Life of St. John Baptist. Such 
series are common elsewhere, especially in baptis- 
teries, of which, of course, the Baptist is patron. 



86 The European Tour 

You will find, for example, several similar sets at 
Florence, — one on the bronze door of the Bap- 
tistery by Andrea Pisano ; one on the silver altar 
removed from the same building to the Cathedral 
Museum ; and one or two in other situations. 
Hence you should examine each episode sepa- 
rately, and note the treatment ; you will find after- 
wards that each scene recurs, that the incidents are 
stereotyped, and that the figures introduced, nay, 
the very attitudes and expressions, are all of them 
conventional. A similar series, representing the 
Life of Christ, earlier in date, but not quite so 
beautiful, you will afterwards visit in the ambula- 
tory of Notre-Dame at Paris; and you will find 
it interesting to compare the one scene which 
necessarily occurs in both lives alike, that of the 
Baptism of Christ in Jordan. I have written a 
short account of the history and evolution of this 
scene in art in a paper contributed to the English 
Illustrated Magazine, under the title of " The 
Painter's Jordan." 

I introduce this digression merely in order to 
suggest to you in what spirit you must approach 
Continental cathedrals and churches. Begin by 
understanding the local saints and their histories ; 
and then remember that every church is closely 
connected with its founder and patron. As a pre- 



France : Paris 87 

liminary exercise in this direction, I would advise 
you to read over, in my Historical Guide to 
Paris, first the introductory chapter, with its no- 
tice of St. Denis, and then the section devoted to 
the Basilica of St. Denis near the end of the vol- 
ume. This will serve to show you the close con- 
nection which habitually exists between patron and 
fabric in most historical Catholic countries. Should 
the subject interest you, buy Mrs. Jameson's Sacred 
and Legendary Art and Legends of the Madonna, and 
carry them everywhere with you. 

So much for the route via Dover and Calais. 
But if you don't mind the sea, and can endure a 
four hours' journey in place of one of an hour and 
a half, I would recommend you strongly to go by 
Newhaven and Dieppe, which is a much more pic- 
turesque and representative route. The Calais way 
runs through the dull flats of Picardy; the line 
from Dieppe runs through the hills and dales and 
apple-orchards of Normandy, and by the winding 
valley of the island-dotted Seine, so that you 
approach Paris by its old natural river-way. This 
route also allows you to break the journey at Rouen, 
which is far more interesting in its way than even 
Amiens. To begin with, the town is more histor- 
ical. It has a fine Cathedral, and a still finer 
monastic church, St. Ouen. It has, in addition, sev- 



88 The European Tour 

eral ancient municipal or judicial buildings, which 
almost rival in magnificence those of Belgium. 
And it is a delightful town in which to make your 
first acquaintance with provincial France of the 
Middle Ages. In any case, sooner or later, aim at 
seeing Rouen. 

As for Paris itself, I have given already, in my 
Historical Guide, a full account of the city and 
what to see in it. I will only add here a few 
general hints of the sort which may be useful in 
forming plans for your settlement. Take up your 
quarters somewhere near the Avenue de l'Opera ; 
there you will be within walking distance of most 
things worth seeing. Walk about the modern 
town as much as you like ; but remember that the 
sights which count for culture are all in the Old 
Paris within the Great Boulevards. First and fore- 
most in importance comes undoubtedly the Louvre, 
which is at once the noblest of French historical 
palaces, and the great Museum of the collections of 
Paris. It contains everything — paintings of all 
schools •, sculpture, antique, mediaeval, Renaissance, 
and modern j vases and pottery of all ages ; objects 
of decorative art ; Egyptian, Assyrian, Oriental, 
and other Antiquities. To know the Louvre is 
the work of a lifetime ; to walk through it alone is 
a considerable undertaking. Devote most of your 



France: Paris 89 

time, therefore, to the Louvre. But I would par- 
ticularly advise you to pay special attention to the 
French mediaeval and Renaissance sculpture. 

Still, only a small part of the contents of the 
Louvre are either Parisian or French in origin. 
To see Paris itself^ you must look mainly else- 
where. Second in importance, again, I would 
therefore place the great collections of Cluny, which, 
though in part Italian and Flemish, are much more 
largely of native provenance. Cluny is the museum 
of the art of the Middle Ages ; devote as much 
time as possible to this fascinating building, study- 
ing its contents in the spirit I have indicated in the 
case of the reliefs at Amiens. (See my Histor- 
ical Guide to Paris.) 

Three early churches are of the first rank of im- 
portance, and are still more distinctively Parisian in 
nature, — Notre-Dame, the Sainte Chapelle, and the 
Basilica of St. Denis. Two Renaissance churches 
also deserve close attention, — St. Eustache and 
St. £tienne-du-Mont ; while one much earlier build- 
ing, St. Germain-des-Pres, is hardly less im- 
portant. For other sights and detailed information, 
I must refer you once more to my Paris 
Guide. 

I do not mean, however, that you ought to visit 
the objects here enumerated in the order in which 



go The European Tour 

I have mentioned them. You will find in the 
Guide quite a different scheme drawn up for your 
instruction. In order to understand Paris, the 
best way is to begin with what is distinctively 
Parisian, and what is locally oldest, — the He de la 
Cite, which was the primitive town, and the Royal 
Palace it enclosed ; together with its chapel, the 
Sainte Chapelle of St. Louis. After that, proceed 
to Notre-Dame, the old Cathedral, also situated 
on the original island. Take next the earliest over- 
flow on the Left Bank, where Paris spread to the 
mainland, with the Museum of Cluny, once the 
mansion of the abbots of that famous monastery, 
and the shrine of Ste. Genevieve, the patron saint 
of Paris. Later, proceed to examine the North 
or Right Bank, with its Renaissance palace, the 
Louvre, and its immense collections of Italian or 
Oriental works ; as well as its chapel of St. 
Germain-l'Auxerrois. In this way, I believe, you 
will get from the beginning a far clearer and more 
historical idea of Paris than by any amount of hap- 
hazard and promiscuous sight-seeing. 

In this task, I venture to believe, you will find 
my Guide suggests a practicable plan which will 
unfold to you the growth and development both of 
the City itself and of its arts and buildings. My 
object throughout is to display the connection 



France : Paris 9 1 

between architecture, painting, and sculpture on 
the one hand, and history on the other. 

A single example of the method pursued in these 
Historical Guides will show you better what 
they are driving at than any amount of vague 
generalisation. Let us suppose you are in Paris, 
and you want to see the Sainte Chapelle, That is 
one of the loveliest and most perfect things in the 
city — one of the half-dozen sights which nobody 
should miss, though he miss the Morgue and the 
Moulin Rouge, the races at Longchamps and the 
cafes chantants of the Champs Elysees. If you 
look in the ordinary guide-books, you will find that 
" the Sainte Chapelle was erected by Louis IX.," 
and that " its architect was Pierre de Montereau." 
Those two names, however, you will admit, can 
assist you but little towards a comprehension of 
the building and its meaning. What you really 
desire to know is this, — the circumstances under 
which that glorious pile was built, and the way 
those circumstances have affected its architecture. 
Now, the Sainte Chapelle was the domestic chapel 
of the old palace of the French kings^ situated 
within its walls, and directly approached from it 
by a covered gallery. The palace has gone, but 
the chapel remains to us. Again, it was built by 
Louis IX., the Crusader, — that deeply religious 



92 The European Tour 

and mystic king who gave up his whole life to the 
service of the Church, and was afterwards canon- 
ised by Rome as Saint Louis. During the age of 
the Crusades, the astute Greeks and Syrians found 
the simple and pious knights of western Europe 
most credulous and gullible in the matter of relics ; 
they did a splendid and paying business with the 
Franks in the matter of fragments of the True 
Cross and similar holy objects. Amongst others 
of his sort, St. Louis purchased from an orientalised 
Western, Baldwin, Emperor of Constantinople, 
the Crown of Thorns, which had been miraculously 
preserved by Joseph of Arimathea. He also 
bought a portion of the Holy Cross. To receive 
these sacred objects, for which he had paid an 
enormous sum, he determined to erect a suitable 
shrine within his palace precincts — the Sainte 
Chapelle, which still remains almost as perfect as 
he left it, though greatly modernised by restorers 
in the present century. 

It is as the Shrine of the Crown of Thorns, there- 
fore, that we have mainly to regard this exquisite 
little gem of the best and purest age of Gothic 
architecture. And after that, we have to consider 
it most as the Chapel of the Royal Palace and the 
chief existing memorial of the piety of St. Louis. 
Over the principal doorway, accordingly, sculptured 



France: Paris 93 

angels display the Crown of Thorns and the 
True Cross, whose meaning and relevancy in that 
particular place thus become quite evident. Round 
the pinnacles on the roof, again, the Crown of 
Thorns is hung like a chaplet. Behind the high 
altar stands the richly gilt tabernacle where the holy 
relic itself was preserved ; and this shrine is sur- 
mounted by a sort of platform or gallery of exquisite 
workmanship, from which the kings of France 
used to display it once a year to their people as 
represented by the congregation assembled in the 
chapel. Angels on its face hold a sculptured 
Crown of Thorns in perpetual witness of this 
beautiful ceremony. Everything else about the 
building breathes the ecstatic piety of the saintly 
king; ancient mosaics of martyrs, each wearing, 
as it were, his own crown of thorns, surround the 
building. One of the stained-glass windows re- 
lates in full the story of the bringing of the crown 
from Constantinople, and its enthusiastic reception 
by king and people in Paris. But the chapel is 
royal too ; the fleur-de-lis of France tops every 
pinnacle and covers every pillar ; while closely 
connected with it are the Three Castles of Castile, 
the arms of Louis's mother, Blanche of Castile, to 
whom he was ever the most devoted and loyal of 
sons. Thus the lofty church as it stands forms 



94 The European Tour 

for us not only a monument of splendid Gothic 
architecture, but a perfect picture of the saintly 
royalty of the thirteenth century. 

Now, it is facts like those, the inner meaning of 
buildings, of pictures, of works of sculpture, that 
my guide-books are primarily intended to reveal to 
you. They are purely explanatory. I take the 
visitor round, showing him such remains, and at 
every step pointing out their meaning. If you 
want to know these things, then by all means, use 
them. If you don't want to know these things, 
waste no money in buying what to you will be 
useless ; get a valet-de-place to take you round to 
the Eiffel Tower, the principal music-halls, the 
cafes on the Boulevards, the wax-work shows, and 
such other sights as may strike your fancy. 

Or, again, let us take an example from a picture. 
You are at the Louvre, we will suppose, and you 
have come to a fine work in the Salle des Primitifs 
which arrests your attention. You look it up in 
one of the ordinary guide-books, and you will 
probably find something like this — "251, Man- 
tegna, Madonna della Vittoria ; a very beautiful 
work, of Mantegna's later period." Well, you 
can see for yourself it is a beautiful work; but 
what does it mean ? what are the figures it con- 
tains there for ? That is just what I try to tell 



France : Paris 95 

you. I explain how Charles VIII. of France in- 
vaded Italy, and how he was repelled by a league 
of Italian cities, under the guidance of Gonzaga, 
Marquis of Mantua, who commissioned this pic- 
ture, which contains his portrait. Gonzaga met 
the French at the passage of the river Taro, and 
vowed an altar-piece to the Blessed Virgin if he 
gained the victory. This is that altar-piece. He 
gave the commission to Andrea Mantegna, his 
court painter, whose place in Italian art I try to 
make you realise : and Andrea, following, no 
doubt, his patron's commands, painted in the 
centre the Madonna and Child, — Our Lady ex- 
tending her protecting hand to Gonzaga, who 
kneels in the foreground in full armour, as if offer- 
ing up thanks just after the battle. That is why 
it is called Our Lady of Victory. 

But you also see in the picture several other 
saints on either side. Who are they, and why are 
they included ? Again I try to show the reason. 
To the right is St. Elizabeth (mother of the Bap- 
tist), the patron saint of Gonzaga's wife, who is 
thus symbolically associated with her husband in 
thanksgiving for the victory. Behind and to the 
left are the patron saints of Mantua, who also de- 
serve to be gratefully remembered ; St. Michael, the 
Archangel, the warrior of God, captain of the 



96 The European Tour 

army of the Lord of Hosts, who doubtless fought 
on the side of the Italians, — a glorious figure, in 
resplendent celestial mail : St. Andrew, who was 
not only a patron of Mantua, but also Andrea's 
own personal name-saint : St. Longinus, the con- 
verted centurion who pierced the side of the 
Saviour, and was afterwards baptised, and whose 
bones are preserved in a chapel of St. Andrew's 
church in Mantua : and finally St. George (juch 
a lovely St. George !) the human warrior saint, as 
St. Michael is the angelic one, who stands here 
especially as representing the territory of Venice, 
of which he was patron, in order to suggest the 
idea that the patriotic Venetians were especially 
active in organising the resistance to the French 
invasion. This is only a small part, it is true, of 
what I have to tell you about this lovely picture; 
but further details, read in the absence of the pic- 
ture itself, would be merely wearisome. I merely 
give you this as a single example of the method I 
pursue, and I say again, if you care for this explan- 
atory treatment — if you want to understand how 
these churches were built and these pictures 
painted, not simply to gaze at them in ignorant 
wonder, — then take my guide-books with you. 
If you don't care, be content with the ordinary 
itineraries. 



France : Paris 97 

To see Paris properly in the way here set down 
will take you a month at least ; and the longer you 
stay, the better you will understand it. But as a 
counsel of perfection, I would say, stop a month 
at first, devoting most of your time to the more 
Parisian objects (Notre-Dame, St. Denis, Cluny, 
the Sainte Chapelle), with only a first hasty view 
of the Italian pictures and sculptures; and then 
return again for a fortnight to re-examine these 
last after you have seen Italy. 

Furthermore, let me impress upon you the point 
that you ought to see Cluny before you see the 
Louvre ; and that you should study closely the de- 
velopment of the conventional scenes of mediaeval 
art as there exhibited before you proceed to exam- 
ine their alteration and expansion by Renaissance 
artists as exhibited in the great picture-gallery. 
The Renaissance builds entirely upon mediaevalism, 
while destroying and reconstituting it ; it takes 
conventionalised mediaeval scenes, and proceeds to 
render them with more or less infiltration of clas- 
sical spirit. You may not see the importance of 
this at first ; but after you have watched the 
growth and development of a few single scenes, 
you will realise that only by constant comparison 
can you understand art at its growing periods. 

Above all, recollect that symbolism is the language 
7 



98 The European Tour 

of early art; you cannot read the book unless you 
take the trouble to learn the language. My 
Guides are intended as an easy introduction to such 
knowledge. They take you in front of each picture 
or statue, and tell you just as much as is then and 
there necessary to make you comprehend and enjoy 
its meaning. If you visit Paris in this spirit, you 
will learn from it most of what it has to teach you. 

To sum up, spend most of your time devoted 
to France in Paris, and see it thoroughly by the 
historical method. 

Of course, if you are not going on to Italy, then 
you must see Paris in quite a different manner. 
In that case you will want to make the best 
use you can of the Louvre collections ; and the 
Italian pictures and classical sculpture will naturally 
rise to the first rank of importance. If you are 
only going to study Raphael and Leonardo and 
Mantegna here, then study them thoroughly, by all 
means. But in any case follow the course set 
down in my Guide (which is mainly written for 
people who expect to see Paris alone), and you will 
thus get the greatest good out of the limited 
number of Italian paintings and classical statues 
or reliefs here gathered for your observation. 

In either instance you will find the Louvre is the 
kernel of Paris. 



CHAPTER VII 

FRANCE : OUTSIDE PARIS 

AFTER Paris, the visitor may desire to see 
some other parts of France. What these 
parts should be must largely depend upon the time 
of year at which he pays his visit, the plans he has 
formed for himself, and his ulterior objects. 

For example, if you are in France in the 
summer, you may choose the delightful tour of the 
Loire towns, which will introduce you to the most 
interesting group of provincial French cities ; in 
such a trip you can easily include Orleans, Blois, 
Tours, Saumur, Angers, and Chartres. If again 
you are going straight to Switzerland, you will find 
Dijon a capital stopping-place j and you will dis- 
cover there (what you may already have found 
out at Cluny and in the Louvre) that Burgundian 
art was something entirely distinct from French 
art during the Middle Ages. Dijon, in fact, has 
much more in common with such Flemish towns 
as Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp than with those of 
France in the ordinary acceptation. If you are 
bound for Spain, you may visit on the way Orleans 



ioo The European Tour 

and Poitiers, or may diverge a little into the Pyr- 
enees (Eaux Bonnes, Eaux Chaudes, Cauterets), 
especially in summer. Pau is the capital of the 
French Pyrenean district, and having been also the 
capital of the old region of Beam, and the birth- 
place of Henri IV., the first of the Bourbon kings, 
it has many antiquarian attractions, in addition to 
the advantages it derives from its beautiful sit- 
uation, its unrivalled views, and its surrounding 
scenery. 

Of Normandy and Brittany I will not speak in 
detail here. Those countries, it is true, are full of 
objects of secondary interest, — cathedrals, abbeys, 
churches, castles, many of which are closely con- 
nected with the early history of England, and 
therefore also of the American people. But they 
are not for the hasty six-months visitor, whose 
convenience I am particularly considering in this 
volume. Americans who are spending several years 
in Europe, or who are paying their fourth or fifth 
annual visit, may desire to see them ; but they are 
not so well worth attention from the traveller 
pressed for time as most of the other places here 
described in brief. Those who have reached the 
point where a trip in Normandy or Brittany can be 
undertaken with advantage will find full particulars 
of both provinces in Murray and Baedeker. 



France: Outside Paris 101 

Americans who desire to spend the winter in 
Europe, on the other hand, will probably wish to 
light upon some warm spot where they can pass 
the two or three coldest months in comparative 
comfort. For this purpose some of the winter 
stations in the South of France are extremely suit- 
able. If the whole summer has been consumed in 
seeing England, France, Belgium, and Holland, the 
Rhine country, and Switzerland, it may be con- 
venient, before visiting Florence, Rome, or Venice, 
to retire for December, January, and February 
(when sight-seeing is uncomfortable, even in Italy) 
to Pau or the Riviera. Each of these has its own 
advantages. 

Pau is not particularly warm in winter, but it is 
sheltered and windless, and it has undoubted anti- 
quarian attractiveness. The visitor may arrive 
there about the beginning of December, and may 
leave for Italy before the first of March, by which 
date Rome and Florence are becoming agreeable 
places of residence. 

The Riviera is the name usually given in English 
to the narrow strip of coast along the Medi- 
terranean between Marseilles and Genoa. As I 
have spent some ten or twelve winters at its vari- 
ous stations, I am in a position to advise the visitor 
where to go, according to his requirements. It 



102 The European Tour 

must be premised that this strip of coast lies 
between the High Alps to the north and the sea 
to the south, and is remarkable for its luxuriant 
semi-tropical vegetation. Nevertheless, you must 
not suppose that even here you can escape the chill 
of European January. You go to a winter. Snow 
often falls and lies on the ground for three days 
together ; and the cold dry wind known as the 
mistral blows very frequently. On the other hand, 
the sky is generally clear and sunny ; colds are in- 
frequent ; exercise can be taken almost daily in the 
open air; and it is possible to sit out even in 
January and February on sheltered garden seats 
or among the rocks on the hillsides. The coast 
is essentially not French, but Provencal, from 
Marseilles to Cannes ; not Italian, but Ligurian, 
from Nice to Genoa. 

The best way to reach it is by day train from 
Paris to Marseilles ; where sleep the night, and rail 
on next morning to your destination. See later 
for the question of stoppage at Aries, Nimes, or 
Avignon. 

Hyeres is a pleasant winter-resort with beautiful 
views ; quiet and peaceful, but not so sheltered as 
the towns farther east. It overlooks a bay with 
hilly islands. St. Raphael is more French than 
English and American. Cannes is a vast over- 



France: Outside Paris 103 

grown town of villas and gardens, dull and formal, 
but with beautiful drives and charming views. I 
recommend it for elderly people. Antibes (or 
rather Cap d'Antibes), which I prefer myself to all 
the Rivieran stations, is countrified and rocky, with 
charming walks, and exquisite glimpses of sea and 
snow mountain. But if you go there, remember to 
go to the Cap, not to the town, which is dirty and 
sunless. Nice is of course the "Great Town " of 
the Riviera; it has plenty of distractions, but is 
less sheltered than Cannes or Mentone, being open 
to the mistral. It is more a town for pleasure 
than for health. A visit of a week gives you a 
good glimpse of a certain side of the cosmopolitan 
European watering-places. Monte Carlo and Mo- 
naco are the most beautiful spots along this beautiful 
coast, but on the other hand they are the centre of 
the gambling industry. Mentone is deliciously 
situated in a charming valley, with endless lovely 
walks and drives, but with a somewhat narrow 
society. It has the warmest climate of any, and 
is suitable for invalids. These practically exhaust 
the towns of the French Riviera, which is the one 
deservedly most affected by American visitors. 

The reader must bear in mind that none of 
these towns have anything in the way of art or of 
antiquity to delay the visitor. They are resi- 



104 The European Tour 

dential creations almost as purely modern as New- 
port or Saratoga. It is true most of them include 
an " old town," — a dirty, picturesque, steep white 
Mediterranean village, perched on a craggy hill, 
and still looking much the same as in the Middle 
Ages ; but these " old towns " contain nothing in 
the way of architecture or painting to detain the 
visitor; they are interesting merely in a distant 
view ; seen nearer, they become offensive to more 
than one of the senses. Whoever stops on the 
Riviera must regard that part of his tour merely 
as an agreeable loitering in pretty country, beset 
with roses, and overlooking a summer sea in 
the depth of winter. There are a few Roman 
remains, however, at Frejus (scarcely worth the 
trouble of a visit) ; while Aries, Nimes, and 
Avignon, which may be taken on the way south 
to Marseilles, have truly splendid remains of an- 
tiquity. But the coast itself, long decimated by 
the Saracens, is remarkable in Europe for its ex- 
traordinary lack of historical interest. It is just 
a great green paradise of modern villadom, — 
white houses set deep among palms and gardens. 
I ought to add that one may visit on the way 
south three interesting towns. Avignon is note- 
worthy for the old palace of the Popes, inhabited 
by them during their seventy years of exile ; Nimes 



France: Outside Paris 105 

for its splendid Roman temple (the Maison Carree), 
with other fine ruins ; and Aries both for its Roman 
amphitheatre, or other classical remains, and for its 
exquisite Romanesque church of St. Trophime, the 
glorious portal and sculptured cloisters of which 
must rank among the finest architectural works in 
Europe. 

Theoretically, the Italian Riviera ought to be 
treated under Italy ; practically, however, it forms 
a continuous strip with the French Riviera, and is 
always visited at the same time, on the way to the 
great artistic towns of the peninsula, such as 
Florence and Venice. Its characteristics are 
exactly the same as those of the French coast 
which adjoins it ; but it is not quite so mountain- 
ous or quite so beautiful. Indeed, the shore grows 
gradually finer and the hills taller from Marseilles 
to Mentone, where the scenery reaches its culmi- 
nating point of beauty ; they grow gradually less 
fine again as we proceed farther east from Mentone 
to Genoa. Artistically, there is little or nothing to 
choose between them ; the Italian " old towns " 
are quite as filthy and a trifle more picturesque, 
but contain even less of architectural or graphic 
interest. The arcaded streets and steep alleys, 
however, have a dirty attractiveness of their own 
which is undeniable and unwholesome. 



io6 The European Tour 

Three chief stations along the Italian Riviera 
deserve the attention of the tourist. Bordighera 
is pretty, quiet, and warm ; it affords chances for 
excursions to many quaint mountain-villages, such 
as Dolce Acqua, with its picturesque bridge and 
the ruined mediaeval castle of the Dorias. San 
Remo is fashionable, well situated, sheltered, and 
amusing, with a delightful sea-front, a palm-bordered 
promenade, many attractive drives, and beautiful 
surroundings. Alassio is tamer, but forms a con- 
venient spot to break the journey to Genoa. 

As a whole, I advise the tourist to visit the Rivi- 
era only as a place of retreat from the cold of mid- 
winter. Intrinsically, it has no claims save those 
of beautiful natural scenery, lush southern vegeta- 
tion, charming sunny sea, and fine shapes of moun- 
tains. The railroad route along the coast, indeed, is 
one constant succession of exquisite pictures, — blue 
or purple bays, craggy promontories and steep islands, 
white villages perched high on gray mountain spurs, 
towns that gleam and bask among olive and lemon 
groves. But it is merely beautiful. It teaches 
you little that is distinctively European. Look 
upon it rather as a retreat from the coldest time of 
the winter than as a part of your travel. 

The following would be a good plan for passing 
the colder months. Set out from Paris about the 



France : Outside Paris 1 07 

beginning of November. Stop at Dijon, and (if 
you wish it) at Lyons. Then spend a few days, 
en route to Marseilles, in exploring the many 
antiquarian and artistic monuments of Avignon, 
Aries, and Nimes. Pass one night or more at 
Marseilles (very little to see) and then go on for a 
week to Hyeres. After that move slowly along 
the charmed coast, first to Cannes or Antibes, 
then to siren Nice ; or spend a day or two of 
feverish excitement at Monte Carlo, undoubtedly 
the centre of the finest scenery of the district. So 
to Mentone, where the peaceful walks on mountain 
spires and the romantic drives up deep glens will 
delay you for a fortnight ; then cross the Italian 
frontier to Bordighera or San Remo, timing yourself 
so as to reach Genoa early in March, or even to spend 
February in Pisa ; there you will find enough to 
occupy many days in the noble Romanesque 
buildings of the Cathedral group and the paintings 
and sculptures of the too little visited museum. 

Now that I am on the question of the disposition 
of these colder months, I may add parenthetically that 
those who desire to utilise them in seeing and 
learning have three or four other courses open to 
them. One way is to take steamer early in 
November from Marseilles for Algiers, and to spend 
the winter in exploring Algeria and Tunisia ; which 



108 The European Tour 

will give you a glimpse of Mohammedan civilisation 
(or barbarism). Algiers itself, and still better 
its delightful suburb of Moustapha Superieur, are 
the best stations for the very coldest weeks ; thence 
you can move on to Constantine and Biskra (the 
latter in an oasis of the desert, now approached by 
rail) ; returning by Tunis, the most interesting and 
unspoilt town in this part of North Africa. A 
second plan is to spend the cold months about 
Naples^ say at Amain" or Capri, which are more 
picturesque and attractive than the Riviera, while 
they have also access to more interesting antiquities, 
and leave you free to utilise any spell of fine 
weather in early spring at Pompeii or Paestum. 
A third way is a tour in Sicily ^ where you can 
spend the coldest time in Palermo, and go on 
as the weather improves to Syracuse, Catania, 
Taormina, and Messina. Finally you can escape 
the winter altogether by taking refuge in Egypt^ 
where a fortnight in Cairo may be succeeded by a 
trip up the Nile to the First Cataract. 

I apologise for this digression, which is neverthe- 
less apposite, and return to France. Briefly, here, 
my advice may be summed up thus. Spend most 
of the time you devote to this country in Paris ; do 
not try to see much else, except what lies conven- 
iently on your route to Switzerland or Italy, unless 



France: Outside Paris 109 

you already know Europe well, and have plenty of 
time to spare for objects of secondary or tertiary 
interest. In that case you may see Normandy, 
Brittany, Auvergne, the Pyrenees ; but then you 
will need no advice; you have passed by that 
time beyond the stage of a novice, and are in 
a position to frame your own itineraries. Do not, 
in any case, trouble much about the great towns, 
— Marseilles, Lyons, Bordeaux, and so forth ; 
they offer little to detain you. Make, rather, for 
the famous cathedrals, — Amiens, Rouen, Chartres, 
Laon, Rheims, Beauvais, Poitiers ; or for the Roman 
towns, Aries, Nimes, Orange, Valence; or for 
what is mediaevally interesting or of Renaissance 
importance, — Carcassonne, Tarascon, Bourges, 
Tours, Blois, Orleans. If you can see something 
worth seeing on your way to or fro, by all means 
see it; but do not turn out of your course 
for anything. You will find a thousand objects 
of vastly greater importance crying for your atten- 
tion in the Flemish towns, in the Rhine country, 
above all, in Italy. 

Paris first^ very much first; and the provinces 
nowhere. 



CHAPTER VIII 

BELGIUM AND HOLLAND 

Y2 XCEPT Italy, there is nothing in Europe so 
■*-' valuable, so instructive as Belgium. 

The reason is that Belgium in the North, like 
Italy in the South, formed the commercial and there- 
fore also the artistic centre of medievalism. The 
great towns of the Low Countries were the indus- 
trial capitals of the North and West, as Florence, 
Venice, and Constantinople were the industrial 
capitals of the South and East. Long before 
England had risen above the condition of an agri- 
cultural country, subsisting on its exports of wool 
to the manufacturing continent, Belgium ranked 
as a mighty commercial focus. While Liverpool 
was a tidal waste on the Mersey, Bruges was the 
great port for the exportation of cloth and the im- 
portation of wool and furs and spices. While 
Manchester was a rural market town, Ghent was 
the centre of the textile industries of Europe. In 
every way the cities of Belgium led the van of 
progress. The battle of the trading municipality 



Belgium and Holland 1 1 1 

against the feudal lord was fought out by the Van 
Arteveldes ; nay, even the battle of the labourer 
against the capitalist was foreshadowed by the 
craftsmen of Louvain and Ypres. You can under- 
stand the later middle ages aright only by a visit 
to the Low Countries. 

Moreover, Belgium has escaped the terrible cata- 
clysms of the Protestant Reformation and the French 
Revolution far better than any other part of North- 
western Europe. In England you get only the 
bare skeletons of cathedrals and churches, robbed 
of their sculpture, their painting, and their decora- 
tive work by the grasping grantees of Henry VIII. 
or the brutal Puritan soldiers of Cromwell's army. 
When Henry dissolved the monasteries, he stripped 
them of all their precious stones and other valuable 
assets for his own emolument ; or else handed 
them over to great nobles whose acquiescence in 
his schemes of spoliation he thus purchased, and 
who proceeded in their reckless greed to tear the 
very lead from the roofs and the frontals from the 
altars. During the succeeding dynastic and reli- 
gious troubles, most of the works of art in ecclesi- 
astical buildings were destroyed or impaired by the 
mistaken zeal of the Protestant party ; and what 
little survived till the reign of Charles I. was 
mostly smashed or defaced beyond recognition at 



1 1 2 The European Tour 

the hands of the Puritan fanatics of the Common- 
wealth. Hence it happens that in England the 
cathedrals and abbeys are now either absolute ruins 
or else bare architectural fabrics, entirely devoid of 
the sculpture, the frescoes, the mosaics, the stained 
glass, the enamels, the draperies that once adorned 
them. Often they have been " restored " with 
the machine-made art of London or Birmingham. 
Similarly in France, though the destruction 
wrought either by the abortive Reformation or by 
the Sans-culottes of '93 was not quite so disas- 
trous as that wrought by the Protestants and the 
Roundheads in England, yet we possess hardly a 
church which now displays in any fulness its origi- 
nal wealth of internal decoration. The best in 
the Paris district, such as St. Denis, the Sainte 
Chapelle, and Notre-Dame, have been largely re- 
stored, especially as to their sculpture and ornaments; 
while outside Paris, though the carven figures and 
the stained glass have largely escaped destruction 
at Chartres, at Rheims, and at Rouen, yet few 
churches have retained any notable proportion of 
their coloured mural decorations or their works of 
painting and other subsidiary arts. In England, in 
short, you get mere skeletons ; in France, some- 
what maimed and hacked-about corpses. 

But Belgium, though severely treated by the 



Belgium and Holland 1 1 3 

early reformers and the Spanish hordes, still retains 
for us more of its mediaeval splendour than any other 
part of modern North Europe. Its churches are 
full of ancient pictures and decorative works; its 
museums are rich in national products; its town 
halls are glorious specimens of Gothic secular 
architecture, unrivalled elsewhere. In Belgium, 
indeed, for the first time, the American visitor be- 
gins to understand the charm of studying a people's 
history and a people's art side by side in the 
country of their origin, — the charm of seeing the 
actual pictures and sculpture and decorations in 
the very spots where they were first produced, and 
still devoted to the purposes for which their 
makers and their donors designed them. It is one 
thing to see a Raphael in the National Gallery of 
London or the Louvre at Paris, divorced from the 
circumstances which begot it and the land which 
called it forth; quite another thing to see on an 
altar at Ghent the great Van Eyck of the Adora- 
tion of the Lamb, still occupying the very niche in 
the private chapel of the Vydts family who com- 
missioned it — the very niche in which Jan van 
Eyck himself deposited it. It is one thing to see 
a Rubens in Munich or Vienna; quite another 
thing to see it on the grave of Moretus in 
Antwerp Cathedral, where the great painter placed 
8 



ii4 The European Tour 

it above the recent ashes of his friend and 
patron. 

Therefore I say to you, if your aim is culture, it 
is far more important for you to see the cities of Bel- 
gium than even to see London or Paris, 

In my Historical Guide to the Cities of 
Belgium I have dealt in detail with the chief 
objects of interest in this delightful country ; and 
I take it for granted that in making the plan of 
your tour you will turn for further particulars to 
that little volume. So I will deal here mainly 
with the question what parts of Belgium are best 
worth visiting by the American tourist, and in 
what order he ought to approach the chief centres 
of interest. 

You may reach Belgium either from England 
direct or from Paris. If from England direct, 
then the proper order of the towns is, as it were, 
mapped out for you by the railway system ; for 
you will land at Ostend (if you take the shortest 
and most frequented route) and proceed straight to 
Bruges ; whence you will go on to Ghent and 
Brussels ; and thence to Antwerp, thus taking each 
in its right evolutionary and historical sequence, as 
I shall explain hereafter. But the sea passage 
from Dover to Ostend is about four hours long ; 
and many people, especially ladies, prefer the shorter 



Belgium and Holland 115 

Channel crossing (involving though it does a longer 
railway journey) via Dover and Calais. Now, 
please note this next remark carefully, because it 
is one of the highest importance for your right 
comprehension of the history and art of the Low 
Countries. Whether you approach Belgium from 
Calais or from Paris, do not let mere convenience 
of travel distract you into the fatal course of going 
to Brussels first. However you arrive, make 
straight for Bruges^ and for Bruges alone, even if it 
costs you an extra hour or two hours of railway 
travelling. You will never regret it; or rather, 
you will never cease to thank me for having saved 
you from a step which may spoil half the pleasure 
and profit of your trip to Belgium. If you fool- 
ishly visit Brussels first, you will say over and over 
again at Ghent and Bruges, u How I wish I had 
come here before going to Brussels ! " Nay, if 
you are a conscientious traveller and once commit 
this error, you may even feel constrained to see 
Brussels over again, in order to re-read its monu- 
ments and collections by the light of what you have 
learned in Bruges. For Bruges stands at the very 
base of the art of the Low Countries ; and only by 
building up your knowledge by gradual stages from 
Bruges to Antwerp can you ever understand what 
it is all driving at. 



1 1 6 The European Tour 

The most fatal step of all, however, is to visit 
Antwerp first. For Antwerp is the end, not the 
beginning, of Flemish art and Flemish history. 
Do not let anybody or anything persuade to make 
this hopeless practical blunder. If, therefore, con- 
venience or cheapness of travel induces you to 
select the comfortable steamer from Harwich to 
Antwerp as your means of entering Belgium, I 
implore you not to stop and see the city then and 
there, but to take the train direct to Bruges, which 
visit first ; then go on to Ghent ; thence to Brussels ; 
and only finish up your tour with Antwerp. In 
other words, however you arrive in the country, I 
charge you, as you value your soul's education, not 
to follow any other order in visiting the chief 
centres than this — Bruges; Ghent;' Tpres ; Brus- 
sels ; Louvain ; Malines ; Antwerp. The towns I 
have put in Italics are those of secondary impor- 
tance, which you may omit or not as you choose ; 
but the four in Roman type you must see, and see 
in this order. I do not say this dogmatically, but 
for a sufficient reason, which I hope to make you 
feel for yourself in the sequel. 

Bruges comes first, because Bruges is the oldest 
and artistically the richest of the cities of the Low 
Countries. In my own opinion, it is also the most 
interesting and charming town in Europe, outside 



Belgium and Holland 117 

Italy. I do not mean merely that it abounds in 
works of art of all kinds, but that here you see the 
town itself in a condition which still largely recalls 
the mediaeval burgher republic under whose aegis 
these works of art had their natural origin. Bruges 
is a fossil of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seven- 
teenth centuries ; with much modern admixture, it 
is true, but none the less a fossil. 

In order to understand Bruges and the rest of 
Flanders aright, we must remember that the great 
trading towns of the Low Countries were the earli- 
est in the North to recover from the cataclysm 
which overwhelmed the Roman Empire, and from 
the lethargy which followed it. From the fifth to 
the ninth century, the arts of the ancient world 
were dormant and almost dead in the West of 
Europe. When civilisation began to creep North 
again after its long sleep of the dark ages, it was 
left for the Frankish Karl, whom modern Europe 
knows best under his French name of Charlemagne, 
to introduce Roman crafts and Roman letters once 
more into the barbarised Rhineland. The Rhine 
from Basle to Cologne, as we shall see a little later, 
was the region most influenced by this fitful revival 
of the Roman Empire in its Teutonic guise, — the 
u Holy Roman Empire " of later mediaeval syste- 
matists. But Charlemagne had his chief seat at 



1 1 8 The European Tour 

Aix-la-Chapelle or Aachen near the modern Bel- 
gian frontier, and his dominions included not only- 
Belgium, Holland, France, and Germany (to anti- 
cipate the familiar modern terms), but also the 
greater part of Austria and Italy, as well as por- 
tions of Spain and a few other countries. Of the 
northern half of this extended realm, the Rhine 
formed the chief natural water-way ; and it con- 
tinued to be one of the main highroads of traffic 
throughout the Middle Ages. But the Flemish 
towns, lying conveniently near its mouths for trade 
and manufacture, rose rapidly to be the chief indus- 
trial and commercial centres of the new system, 
and grew by the thirteenth and fourteenth centu- 
ries to be the ports and marts, the Liverpools, 
Manchesters, and Birminghams of the mediaeval 
world. 

Many causes contributed to this result. Flan- 
ders, half independent under its own Counts, after 
the empire of Charlemagne's descendants had 
practically split up into France and Germany, was 
comparatively free from the disastrous wars and 
dynastic quarrels which desolated both the larger 
countries. Bruges, situated on an inlet of the sea 
now long since silted up, and known as the Zwin, 
became the chief station of the famous Hanseatic 
League, which was an essentially commercial 



Belgium and Holland 119 

federation of the great trading-towns of the North 
for mutual protection against piratical enemies or 
feudal exactions. By the fourteenth century it 
had become for the Atlantic what Venice was for 
the Adriatic and the Mediterranean ; trading com- 
panies from all the surrounding countries had their 
" factories " or agencies seated in the town, and 
every king of importance kept a minister accredited 
to the merchant city. Thus Caxton was governor 
of the English " factory " at Bruges, where he 
learnt the art of printing from Colard Mansion ; 
and the Medici of Florence, the Banca di San 
Giorgio of Genoa, and the millionaire Fuggers of 
Augsburg had all their representatives in this early 
Flemish London. 

A single paragraph from my Historical Guide 
will serve to make this point clearer : — 

u Some comprehension of the mercantile condition 
of Europe in general during the Middle Ages is 
necessary in order to understand the early impor- 
tance and wealth of the Flemish cities. Southern 
Europe, and in particular Italy, was then still the 
seat of all higher civilisation, more especially of the 
trade in manufactured articles and objects of luxury. 
Florence, Venice, and Genoa ranked as the pol- 
ished and learned cities of the world. Farther 
east, again, Constantinople still remained in the 



120 The European Tour 

hands of the Greek emperors, or, during the 
Crusades, of their Latin rivals. A brisk trade 
existed via the Mediterranean between Europe 
and India or the nearer East. This double stream 
of traffic ran along two main routes, — one, by the 
Rhine, from Lombardy and Rome ; the other, by 
sea, from Venice, Genoa, Florence, Constantinople, 
the Levant, and India. On the other hand, France 
was still but a half civilised country, with few 
manufactures and little external trade ; while Eng- 
land was an exporter of raw produce, chiefly wool, 
like Australia in our own time. The Hanseatic 
merchants of Cologne held the trade of London ; 
those of Wisby and Lubeck governed that of the 
Baltic ; Bruges, as head of the Hansa, was in 
close connection with all of these, as well as with 
Hull, York, Novgorod, and Bergen. The posi- 
tion of the Flemish towns in the fourteenth cen- 
tury was thus not wholly unlike that of New York, 
Philadelphia, and Boston at the present day ; they 
stood as intermediaries between the older civilised 
countries, like Italy or the Greek empire, and the 
newer .producers of raw material, like England, 
North Germany, and the Baltic towns. The 
local manufactures of Flanders consisted chiefly 
of woollen goods and linens ; the imports included 
Italian luxuries, Spanish figs and raisins, Egyptian 



Belgium and Holland 121 

dates, Oriental silks, English wool, cattle, and 
metals, Rhenish wines and Baltic furs, skins, and 
walrus tusks." 

Of this busy Flemish world of the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries, Bruges was the great 
centre. The art that grew up in its midst bears 
on its very face the impress of its commercial 
origin. France is essentially a monarchical country, 
and it is centralised in Paris, where everything is 
regal in type, from the Louvre to the Sainte 
Chapelle, from the royal park of Versailles to the 
royal basilica of St. Denis. The Italian towns, 
on the other hand, were oligarchies of noble 
families ; the principal buildings of Florence, 
Venice, and Genoa are therefore the castles or 
palaces of princely houses, while the art is mainly 
that of the painters patronised by the Medici or 
the Doges. But in Flanders everything is in 
essence commercial. The architecture consists 
mainly, not of kingly palaces or of private man- 
sions, but of guilds, town halls, exchanges, belfries ; 
the pictures are the portraits of solid and success- 
ful merchants, or the devotional works which a 
merchant donor presented to the patron saint of 
his town or business. They are almost overloaded 
with details of fur, brocade, jewellery, lace, gold, 
silver, polished brass, metal work, and oriental 



122 The European Tour 

carpets ; they bespeak a wealthy and cultivated 
bourgeoisie. In order to understand Flemish art, 
therefore, you should see it first in the opulent 
merchant towns where it took its origin. 

The nucleus of Bruges is formed by the famous 
group of old city buildings, including the Belfry, 
which was the embodiment of the town privileges, 
together with the H6tel-de-Ville and its subsidiary 
edifices. These Flemish belfries are in themselves 
very interesting relics, because they were the first 
symbols of corporate existence and municipal power 
which every town wished to erect in the Middle 
Ages. The use of the bell was to summon the 
citizens to arms in defence of their rights, or to 
counsel for their common liberties. Every Teu- 
tonic burgher community desired to wring the right 
of erecting such a belfry from its feudal lord ; and 
those of Bruges and Ghent are still majestic 
memorials of the freedom-loving wool-staplers of 
the thirteenth century. By the side of the Belfry 
stands the Cloth Hall, representing the trade from 
which the town derived its wealth ; while hard by 
is the Hotel-de-Ville, with its exquisite little Gothic 
chapel of the Saint Sang, built to contain some 
drops of the Holy Blood of Christ which Thierry 
of Alsace brought back from the Crusade in 1149, 
and thus fitly comparable from a certain point of 



Belgium and Holland 123 

view with the Sainte Chapelle of Paris. This 
noble and stately group of municipal and mercantile 
buildings enables us mentally to reconstruct the 
time when Bruges was the greatest commercial 
seaport of Western Europe, when its quays were 
crowded with Venetian ships and English wool- 
merchants, and when the wealth of the Rhine, the 
Baltic, and the Channel poured in upon it daily as 
the chief emporium of mediaeval industry. 

These, however, are but the first attractions 
of Bruges. Add to them a charming old town, 
threaded by silent canals like a northern Venice, 
and with houses that have descended to us straight 
from the seventeenth century or earlier, and you 
will understand why I say that at least a week 
should, if possible, be devoted to Bruges. If it is a 
question of cutting short the time either here or at 
Brussels or Antwerp, let Brussels and Antwerp go 
by comparison. Stick to what is most impor- 
tant, most instructive, most beautiful. Don't let 
the fact that modern arrangements have made 
Brussels the capital of a mushroon monarchy mis- 
lead you. Brussels is full of delightful things, it 
is true, but it has not half the real interest and 
value of Bruges. See this by all means, even if 
you are therefore compelled to skimp for time the 
more modern cities. 



124 The European Tour 

The greatest reason of all for going to Bruges, 
however, is to see its pictures, which hot only form 
the groundwork for a knowledge of Flemish art, 
but rank as one of the greatest treats Europe has to 
offer. The most important collection, consisting 
entirely of Memling's masterpieces, is at the Hospital 
of St. John, a very ancient foundation, served to 
the present day by the Augustinian nuns who were 
there already in the fourteenth century, and who 
still wear the same dress as in Memling's pictures. 
This little gallery of one man's art may fairly 
rank with the Fra Angelicos at San Marco in 
Florence and the Giottos in the Madonna dell* 
Arena at Padua, as one of the three most interest- 
ing collections in the world. There are only 
some half-dozen works, it is true ; but they will 
occupy you with pleasure for many visits. The 
chief gem is the casket containing the arm of St. 
Ursula, who was martyred at Cologne, with her 
11,000 virgins, by the heathen Huns about the 
fifth century. The sides, the ends, and the roof 
of this exquisite little shrine, a Gothic chapel in 
miniature, are covered with dainty pictures of the 
legend of the saint, one of the most poetic in the 
whole range of hagiology ; and they have been 
treated by Memling in the spirit of a fairy tale, 
with an art that carries away every sympathetic 



Belgium and Holland 125 

visitor. The idyllic painter reads the whole tale as 
a series of episodes in a courtly life, like that of 
the Burgundian princes at Bruges in his own time ; 
and he has therefore given us such a set of scenes 
in silk and velvet costumes of the period, idealised 
and poeticised, as once beheld must live with one 
forever. 

Whatever else you omit in Europe, try hard to 
see these exquisite and immortal pictures. 

As a single example of the way in which, as I 
believe, such works ought to be studied, in con- 
nection with the place and circumstances which 
gave them birth, I will extract from my Histori- 
cal Guide the description of one among these 
delicious works, of which the ordinary account 
would be merely that it represented the Adoration 
of the Magi, by Memling. In order really to 
understand what such a picture is driving at, 
the description should rather run somewhat as 
follows : — 

" Near the window by the entrance is a Trip- 
tych, also by Memling, commissioned by Brother 
Jan Floreins of this Hospital. The central panel 
represents the Adoration of the Magi, which takes 
place, as usual, under a ruined temple fitted up as 
a manger. The Eldest of the Three Kings 
(according to precedent) is kneeling and has pre- 



126 The European Tour 

sented his gift ; Joseph, recognisable (in all three 
panels) by his red and black robe, stands erect 
behind him, with the presented gift in his hands. 
The Middle-aged King, arrayed in cloth of gold, 
with a white tippet, kneels with his gift to the L. 
of the picture. The Young King, a black man, 
as always, is entering with his gift to the right. 
The three thus typify the Three Ages of Man, and 
also the three known continents, Europe, Asia, 
Africa. On the L. side of this central panel are 
figured the donor, Jan Floreins, and his brother 
Jacob. (Members of the same family are grouped 
in the well-known "Duchatel Madonna," also by 
Memling, in the Louvre.) To the right is a 
figure looking in at a window and wearing the 
yellow cap still used by convalescents of the 
Hospital (arbitrarily said to be a portrait of Mem- 
ling). The left panel represents the Nativity, with 
our Lady, St. Joseph, and two adoring angels. 
The right panel shows the Presentation in the 
Temple, with Simeon and Anna, and St. Joseph 
(in red and black) in the background. (The whole 
thus typifies the Epiphany of Christ ; left, to the 
Blessed Virgin; centre, to the Gentiles; right, to 
the Jews.) The outer panels, in pursuance of 
the same idea, have figures; right, of St. John 
Baptist with the lamb (he pointed out Christ to 



Belgium and Holland 1 27 

the Jews), with the Baptism of Christ in the back- 
ground ; and left, St. Veronica, who preserved for 
us the features of our Lord, displaying his divine 
face on her napkin. The architectural frame 
shows the First Sin and the Expulsion from Para- 
dise. Note everywhere the strong character in 
the men's faces, and the exquisite landscape or 
architectural backgrounds. Dated 1479. This 
is Memling's finest altar-piece : its glow of colour 
is glorious." 

The other little collection at the Academy will 
introduce you to Jan van Eyck, the founder of 
the Flemish school of painting, to Gerard David, 
and to many other Flemish artists of the highest 
importance. • 

Mention of the Burgundian court too reminds 
me that Bruges is the natural place in which to 
study the dynastic history of the Netherlands under 
its native princes, its Burgundian rulers, and its 
later Spanish despots. In one of the two splendid 
churches of the town — rich in other works of art 
as well — you will find the tombs, the costly and 
gorgeous tombs, of Charles the Bold and his 
daughter Mary of Burgundy ; pegs on which you 
may hang your knowledge of that powerful dynasty 
whose memorials will pursue you across the rest 
of Europe, from Venice to Madrid, from Vienna 



128 The European Tour 

to Brussels, from Rome to Innsbruck. The 
famous chimney-piece of the old Palais de Justice 
hard by will show you the effigies of the ancestors 
of Charles V. in a form which readily fixes their 
relationship on your memory. Here and here only 
you get the tangled threads unravelled : here and 
here only the history lives again for you. 

I have dwelt long on Bruges — comparatively; 
but I wish space permitted me to dwell longer. 
For it fascinates. Go there early, and do not 
hurry away from it. You must drink it in slowly, 
and you may learn much from it. Besides which, 
every walk through the town is a succession of 
pictures ; the old walls, the gates, the step-gables 
of the houses, the Madonnas in the niches, the 
turrets, the reliefs, everything is delightful, and 
everything tells you you are back in the Middle 
Ages. 

Ghent was in its time as fine a town as Bruges, 
and must once have been as rich in sculpture, 
painting, and decorations. But it has been more 
fully modernised, and perhaps two days, or at least 
three, may satisfy the enquiring mind of the 
American tourist. While Bruges was the chief 
seaport, Ghent was the chief manufacturing town 
of the fourteenth century. Into its history and its 
connection with the England of Edward III. I 



Belgium and Holland 129 

have gone at length in my Historical Guide. 
The chief reasons for visiting it at present are its 
fine old churches, its Town Hall and Belfry, its 
excellent pictures, and above all its glorious polyp- 
tych of the Adoration of the Lamb by Hubert and Jan 
van Eyck, which forms the first great work of the 
Flemish school of painting. This immense altar- 
piece occupies the spot where it was originally 
placed, in the chapel of the Vydts family, in the 
Church of St. John Baptist (now the Cathedral of 
St. Bavon), and to see it properly requires more 
than two or three visits ; for though nominally one 
picture, and really taken up with a single scene, it 
consists of many separate figures and episodes in 
different tiers, and contains within itself an epitome 
of Flemish theology and symbolism in the fifteenth 
century. I have elsewhere given a full explana- 
tion of its numerous groups of saints and martyrs. 
As for Brussels, I need not press its claims upon 
the tourist's attention. As a rule, indeed, the ten- 
dency of visitors is to allot an unduly long propor- 
tion of their time to the Belgian capital, and to 
put ofF Bruges and Ghent, collectively so much 
more beautiful and interesting, with a day each, or 
at best a couple of days of hurried sight-seeing. 
This is a serious error. Not that I wish to detract 
from the charms of Brussels ; for I confess I find 
9 



130 The European Tour 

it one of the most fascinating and alluring cities in 
Europe, one from which it is hard to tear oneself. 
It is usual to speak of Brussels as " a miniature 
Paris." The judgment, I venture to say, is essen- 
tially a vulgar one. Brussels has far more that is 
interesting to show one than Paris, except as re- 
gards the foreign collections — Italian, classical, 
Assyrian, Egyptian, etc. — of the French capital, 
In local and national art, Brussels is the richer of 
the two. If what people mean is that both towns 
have boulevards, cafes, gardens, squares, parks, 
kiosks, theatres, and music-halls, — in short, the 
common features of modern European town life, — 
and that Paris, being larger, has naturally more of 
them, of course they are right ; but then, on the 
same principle, one might as well call Chicago a 
big Brussels. In genuine interest, Brussels runs 
Paris close, and in some ways beats it ; only those 
who do not care for art or antiquity could ever say 
that u Brussels disappoints if seen after Paris." As 
a place of prolonged residence, it is simply delight- 
ful, — bright, airy, open, not too big, with all its 
parts accessible; and every other great centre in 
Europe can be reached from it more easily than 
from any other city, if one takes all together. 
Indeed, when I think of its glorious contents, I do 
not envy the man who does not love Brussels. 



Belgium and Holland 131 

Take up your quarters in the upper town, not 
far from the King's Palace, where you have fresh 
air, and space, and are nearest to everything. 

The sights of Brussels are of many kinds. In 
the first place its mediaeval centre consists of the 
finest Old Square in Europe (except those of Ven- 
ice and Florence) ; in which are situated the glo- 
rious H6tel-de-Ville and the gorgeous Maison du 
Roi, two of the finest secular buildings in the 
world ; while the rest of the Place consists entirely 
of handsome Renaissance guild-halls. This square 
alone gives Brussels a far higher rank than that of 
u a little Paris ; " there is nothing in Paris to be 
named in the same day with it. Then, again, 
there is the noble Cathedral of the local patroness, 
Ste. Gudule; her image, carrying the lantern 
which the devil tried to blow out, recurs in every 
part of it, as does also that of the local patron, St. 
Michael the Archangel. You will find him, if you 
look for him, on the very lamp-posts. It is this 
continuity of idea between the Middle Ages and 
modern times that gives half the charm to Europe ; 
and it is for the sake of calling attention to these 
persistent features, of suggesting the reasons and 
explanations of things, that I have been moved to 
plan my series of Historic Guide-books. 

Brussels is also the place in which to form a 



132 The European Tour 

connected idea of Flemish art. At Bruges and 
Ghent you saw its magnificent beginnings in the 
Van Eycks and Memling; at Brussels you make 
further acquaintance with these same early artists, 
as well as with their near contemporaries Dierick 
Bouts and Roger van der Weyden ; but you also 
follow out the development of the intermediate 
Flemish school, in Quentin Matsys, Gossart, and 
other transitional masters ; you watch the intro- 
duction of a new style derived from the Italian 
Renaissance ; and you are enabled to follow the 
subsequent rise of Rubens and his school ; as well 
as the first hints of Vandyck, Rembrandt, and the 
later Dutch masters. You will here be in a posi- 
tion to guess why I advised you first to see Bruges 
and Ghent. You were able there to concentrate 
your attention on the beautiful works of the early 
school; by the time you reach Brussels, these will 
have become so far familiar to you that you will be 
fitted intelligently to trace the further development 
of Flemish art and of its Dutch offshoot. But if 
you were first to attack the whole mingled mass of 
early and transitional work, as you see it set to- 
gether, somewhat pell-mell, in the Hall of the Old 
Flemish Masters at the Brussels Museum — still 
more if you were to begin with the suite of rooms 
containing the Rubenses and the Vandycks, — as 
f 



Belgium and Holland 133 

most tourists do, — you could never get anything 
but a confused and phantasmagoric idea of the art 
of the Low Countries. You would understand 
none of it. Begin with what is simplest, easiest, 
and earliest ; proceed to what is later, more com- 
plex, and more varied. 

A stay of about a week will suffice to give you 
a good idea of Brussels. I have sketched in my 
Guide a plan of action. 

Antwerp is practically a town of much later 
origin than the other three. Though in one sense 
old, its importance dates only from the fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries. As the Zwin at Bruges 
silted up, and as Venice declined, Antwerp rose 
into commercial greatness. More than that; it 
was the first leading Atlantic seaport of the more 
extended traffic. It flourished with the military 
greatness of Spain, and with the commercial im- 
portance of America and the Indies. Hence its 
art belongs almost entirely to the later period, 
beginning with Quentin Matsys, who died in 
1 53 1, and culminating with Rubens, whose life 
as an artist nearly coincides with the first half of 
the seventeenth century. In one word, it is a 
Renaissance city. True, the modern museum, one 
of the finest in the world, contains several noble 
works of earlier painters ; but these have been 



134 The European Tour 

mainly brought hither in recent years, and none of 
them have any original connection with Antwerp. 
On every account, therefore, the town ought to 
be visited last of the Belgian cities ; it closes a 
chapter in the national development. 

Briefly put, Antwerp is the city of Rubens ; and 
Rubens is now a far less interesting figure than he 
was to the generation which cared only for 
Renaissance art, ignoring Fra Angelico, Botticelli, 
Van Eyck, and Memling. A visit of three or four 
days ought therefore to suffice for the hasty 
traveller ; those who have more time to spend 
will find a week amply sufficient. The Cathe- 
dral has excellent points, but it has been much 
overrated ; it contains fine pictures, but not so 
fine now as they were thought thirty years ago. 
Recollect that taste at present is going back to the 
fountain-heads, and that Roger van der Weyden 
and Gerard David are beginning to assume the 
place once usurped by later painters. 

As to the Antwerp Museum, it is full of fine 
works, and deserves long and close attention. 
Besides its admirable early masterpieces, including 
a lovely and touching Van der Weyden, it is es- 
pecially important for the study of Rubens, whose 
chronological development can nowhere else be 
followed to so great advantage. You will find him 



Belgium and Holland 135 

a different painter here (and at Munich) from the 
hasty coverer of sprawling canvases whose ex- 
uberant dames you learned rather to dislike in 
Paris. With all his faults, all his fly-away seven- 
teenth-century mannerisms and allegories, you will 
see Rubens in this gallery as a grand seigneur 
of art, dispensing colour with princely magnifi- 
cence, and lavish in his ostentation of artistic 
opulence. 

Then there is the Plantin-Moretus Museum^ 
belonging to a famous family of early printers, 
which nobody should miss, and charmingly in- 
stalled in its own sixteenth-century palace. These 
and many other sights make Antwerp rank fourth 
in interest among Belgian towns — a long way 
behind Bruges and Brussels, it is true, but still 
high in the scale of European art-cities. 

Three lesser towns also deserve a visit from 
those who can spare time. Tpres has a mag- 
nificent Cloth Hall, and was a mighty manu- 
facturing city in the fourteenth century ; it can 
best be reached from Bruges or Ghent. Louvaln 
is within half an hour's rail from Brussels ; it has 
a noble Hotel-de-Ville and a good church, with 
some of Dierick Bouts's masterpieces. Malines, 
with its splendid cathedral and nice old-world air, 
may best be seen on your way from Brussels to 



136 The European Tour 

Antwerp. Indeed, that is the most charming 
point about Belgium and Holland ; the objects of 
interest lie so close together that you can spend the 
day in sight-seeing, and proceed by train — never 
exceeding an hour's journey — to the next town 
in the evening. 

After Belgium, Holland falls flat. It has little 
early interest, and depends entirely for its effect 
upon seventeenth-century architecture and paint- 
ing. You can skip Rotterdam; it is scarcely 
worth a visit, unless you have plenty of time, and 
are a sworn admirer of the minor Dutch painters. 
But you must stop a few days at the Hague, where 
costume, character, old brick houses, and quaint 
streets and palaces are all in their way delightful. 
The royal Picture Gallery is also the second col- 
lection in the world for the native Dutch school ; 
it is rich in Rembrandts and Paul Potters, and you 
will probably learn in it for the first time to ap- 
preciate the merits of Jan Steen, Gerard Dow, 
Terburg, Hondekoeter, the Ruysdaels, and Van der 
Heist. Rembrandt's School of Anatomy and Paul 
Potter's Bull are the most famous pictures of the 
collection ; but I say little of Dutch art because it 
is essentially modern ; the spectator can see its 
meaning at sight for himself; it does not require 
explanation like the mediaeval works of Belgium 



Belgium and Holland 137 

and Italy. For the same reason I do not at 
present contemplate adding a Historical Guide to 
Holland to my series. 

Pleasant excursions can be made from the Hague 
to the watering-place of Scheveningen, where Dutch 
costume is seen at its best, and to Delft, which is 
a capital example of a comparatively unspoilt old 
Dutch town. 

Between the Hague and Amsterdam be sure you 
stop at Leyden and Haarlem. The first is a 
picturesque town, with more mediaevalism surviv- 
ing in it than is usual in Holland ; the second is 
both quaint in itself and also indispensable for the 
study of Frans Hals, most of whose admirable 
portraits and portrait-pieces are here preserved. 
A day at each will serve to show you most of 
what is to be seen 5 but of course a much longer 
stay is needed for anything like a proper study of 
the buildings and the works of art contained in 
them. 

The interest of Amsterdam is almost confined to 
its comprehensive Museum, though the town itself 
is curious in its way as a sort of dull and brick- 
built Northern Venice. The Museum is a hotch- 
potch of all arts and antiquities ; but the only 
thing that need long detain the stranger is its 
splendid Picture Gallery, undoubtedly the noblest 



138 The European Tour 

collection of Dutch paintings in the world. The 
Rembrandts are unrivalled ; and the Van der Heists 
run them closer than most critics are ready to 
admit. 

Those who mean to spend much time in Europe 
will find many other things in Holland to interest 
them y such as the curious " dead cities " of the 
Zuider Zee, and the ancient university town of 
Utrecht. More accessible from Amsterdam are 
the island of Mar ken in the Zuider Zee, which of 
late years has become (perhaps too much) a place 
of pilgrimage for tourists, because of its rather 
theatrical and studied quaintness ; and Gouda, 
whose ancient stained glass forms the best exist- 
ing specimen of old Dutch art in that material. 
But on the whole, I do not advise the six-monthly 
visitor to spend too large a proportion of his time 
in Holland. It is so purely modern. If he desires 
to make acquaintance with the great Dutch 
painters, a day or two at the Hague, Haarlem, and 
Amsterdam will amply suffice for a first impres- 
sion ; the rest is merely odd with a seventeenth- 
century oddity and picturesqueness ; I regard it as 
a dangerous Will-o'-the-wisp to lead the aspirant 
astray from what is really more important in 
Germany and Italy. Hurry on to the South, and 
then return if you choose. After you have learnt 



Belgium and Holland 139 

what artistic wealth exists in Siena and Perugia — 
I do not say in Florence, Rome, and Venice — you 
can judge better for yourself whether it is worth 
your while to waste time on Alkmaar, Helder, or 
Groningen. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE RHINELAND 

9 I V HE leisurely tourist, proceeding to Italy from 
•*■ Belgium or Holland, will find a stay of a 
week or two among the towns of the Rhineland 
both instructive and agreeable. It is the indispen- 
sable introduction to a German tour. 

For the Rhineland is historic Germany, Along 
that great water-way civilisation first penetrated in 
Roman times, and most of the existing towns of 
the chief importance show traces of having been 
formerly Roman stations. It is true one might 
say the same thing about London, York, and Lin- 
coln, about Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles ; and 
indeed the Roman remains of Southern France are 
far finer in some ways than any to be seen in any 
part of Germany. Treves (or Trier) itself is but 
a poor thing compared with Nimes, Orange, and 
Aries. They were populous cities : it was an 
outlying local centre. Yet it is important to bear 
in mind the fact that in the Rhineland at last we 
stand in the midst of a country once thoroughly 



The Rhineland 141 

Romanised ; a country whence the intrusive bar- 
barian never wholly ousted the lingering relics of 
Roman culture, as he did in England ; a country 
which when civilisation began to spread northward 
once more became the chief seat of Charlemagne's 
great West-European Empire. All that is oldest 
and best worth seeing for its native art in the 
region we now call Germany (save only Nurem- 
berg) is to be found in and around the Rhineland 
— the noblest cathedrals, the finest churches, the 
thickest clustered castles, the most exquisite paint- 
ings. This alone is mediaeval Germany. From it 
as a centre civilisation spread slowly with tentative 
steps to the surrounding uplands and to the half 
Slavonic border. Prussia and Saxony are late- 
comers in the comity of European nations ; the 
Rhineland alone is the real and original civilised 
Germany. 

Here again, therefore, I must enter a protest 
against the serious mistake of making first for Ber- 
lin, Dresden, and Munich. These are not in any 
true sense Germany. Berlin is the artificial and 
complex capital of a brand-new modern Empire, 
built on soil which is hardly German save by adop- 
tion, and inhabited by a mixed race nearly half of 
whom are more Slav than Teuton. It has little 
of history, little of antiquity, belonging to its own 



142 The European Tour 

spot, truly local and native. Of late years, it is 
true, it has acquired many works of art of impor- 
tance ; but these are chiefly foreign, modern, or at 
least unconnected in origin and history with Berlin 
itself. The fact is, whatever interest the town pos- 
sesses is more like that of an American city, with 
which you are already familiar, than that of an an- 
cient European metropolis. Leave aside such places 
for the present at least, and concentrate yourself 
on what is most European, most original, most 
typical, — what is oldest in itself, and therefore to 
you newest. After seeing Italy, you can, if time 
remains to you, turn back to the recent collections 
of Berlin. 

Dresden, again, is a rather modern town, with 
splendid art-collections, a great reputation as a 
(cheap) musical centre, and a somewhat greater 
air of antiquity than Berlin ; but its best works of 
art are still Italian ; and though you ought certainly 
to see it, if possible, before you return to America, 
I strongly advise you to put off visiting it till 
after you have explored Italy. For in Italy you 
will have learned where to place all its chief treas- 
ures; you will have discovered the historical 
sequence of the artists and their works, and you 
will appreciate Dresden ten thousand times better 
on your return than if you visit it on your way 



The Rhineland 143 

South. Much the same thing is true of Munich, 
which you should also see, but after Italy. In one 
word, the interest of these two great art-towns of 
Germany is not German but cosmopolitan ; the 
interest of the Rhineland is local and historical. 
Rome and Florence hold the keys of Dresden and 
Munich ; Cologne and Mayence hold their own 
keys, which are the keys of Germany. 

The Rhineland, then, is the beginning of Ger- 
many, the centre of Germany, the core of Germany, 
the historical Germany. It is the land of Charle- 
magne ; and Charlemagne lies at the very root of all 
West-European culture. But you may say, " If 
so, why did you not advise us, in accordance with 
your usual evolutionary idea, to visit the Rhine- 
land first, before Belgium and Holland, which 
clearly derive their prime impetus from it ? " 
Well, that is my wisdom ! Of course, if you were 
to push this evolutionary principle to its extreme, 
you would have to begin with the Greeks and 
Romans ; or, if you want to be more thorough, with 
the Assyrians and Egyptians ; or, if you insist on 
being quite broadly anthropological, with the palaeo- 
lithic and neolithic savages. But thoroughness such 
as this is practically impossible ; and what is more, 
it is undesirable. You will find it best in practice to 
begin with what is nearest to you and to your own 



144 The European Tour 

civilisation, — France and England; then go back 
to the Low Countries ; and from the Low Coun- 
tries proceed to the Rhineland, and so on Rome- 
wards. Each country, as you come to it, teaches 
you something, and on the whole your progress is 
backward, from the known to the unknown ; I 
only plead that in each department you ought to 
walk systematically. England and France showed 
you the transition from the mediaeval to the 
modern ; Belgium showed you the mediaeval in full 
blast ; the Rhineland takes you back to the roots 
of the Middle Ages in the system of Charlemagne. 
Each step back helps to explain the steps you have 
already examined ; but as you must begin some- 
where, it is best to begin near your own civilisation. 
You thus get in the end a more connected picture. 
On your way to the Rhine from Belgium or 
Holland, you must certainly stop at Aix-la- Chap elk, 
or Aachen, which derives its first name of Aix 
from the Roman Aquae, " the Baths " or " the 
Waters," and its second of " la-Chapelle " from 
the dome or mausoleum which Charlemagne 
erected to contain his own body. Here you can 
feel you are beginning to get back to the real 
roots of things. Aix is the ancient capital of the 
Teutonic Empire. Its origin goes back to the 
days of old Rome. When the Romans held 



The Rhineland 145 

the Rhineland, with their colony at Cologne, they 
called this place Aquisgranum, that is to say, " the 
Mineral Waters," and resorted to it as a cure 
much as visitors do to the present day. When 
Charlemagne conquered and reunited the greater 
part of the Western Empire in his new Frankish 
realm, he made this his principal city north of the 
Alps, and erected in it the nucleus of the existing 
cathedral, one of the most historical buildings in 
modern Germany. Do not on any account neg- 
lect to see it. But the mausoleum which he 
thus built for his own remains, with fragments 
ransacked from older Roman towns, is an excel- 
lent example of the general principle I have just 
laid down ; for you can only really understand 
the tomb of Charlemagne after you have seen 
Ravenna. 

You must bear in mind that with the setting in 
of the decadence at Rome, Ravenna rose to be prac- 
tically the chief city of Italy, and the seat of the 
fleet, which then almost replaced the army as a 
means of national protection. It was the capital 
of Honorius and the late Western Emperors of the 
last old Roman line ; later still it was the capital 
of the Gothic kingdom of Italy, under Theodoric 
and his successors ; and when the Byzantine 
emperors reconquered for a while the Adriatic 



146 The European Tour 

provinces, it became the seat of Justinian and the 
Exarchs from Constantinople. Naturally enough, 
therefore, when Charlemagne began to re-establish 
the Western Empire, it was to the still splendid 
buildings of Ravenna, glowing even now with gor- 
geous wealth of mosaics, that he looked first for 
models. When he decided to erect for himself a 
fitting mausoleum at his capital of Aix, it was the 
noble Church of San Vitale at Ravenna that he un- 
dertook to copy. This church itself was probably 
the court chapel of the Palace at Ravenna ; it still 
stands, and is an octagon of great beauty, built in 
526 by Archbishop Ecclesius, under the superin- 
tendence of Julius Argentarius, on the very spot 
where St. Vitalis, the local saint to whom it is ded- 
icated, suffered martyrdom. It was consecrated in 
547 by St. Maximian, and its glorious mosaics still 
present us the figures of that holy man himself, as 
well as of Justinian and Theodora, his patrons and 
sovereigns. On this fashionable model, then, the 
last masterpiece of decadent Roman art, Charle- 
magne built his own mausoleum, an imposing 
octagon of the Byzantine style, and practically the 
oldest modern building of importance in Germany. 
It shows us the transition from the older to the 
newer Roman Empire. 

Charlemagne, however, as later ages knew him, 



The Rhineland 147 

was not merely a great emperor and a wise ad- 
ministrator ; he was also a canonised saint. He 
had been buried in his own mausoleum, built in 
part by Italian workmen ; but being a saint, he 
was naturally not allowed to rest there forever. 
u Translation " is one of the penalties of saintship. 
Three centuries and a half after his death, the 
Emperor Otho III. opened the tomb to inspect the 
remains ; and a century and a half later Frederick 
Barbarossa transferred the body to a splendid antique 
sarcophagus, still preserved in the church, though 
now empty. The slabs on which the holy form 
had previously lain were then made into a corona- 
tion chair for the emperors. In 1215 Frederick 
II. transferred the great emperor's remains to a 
reliquary of gold and silver, kept at present in the 
Cathedral treasury, where they receive even now 
the homage of the faithful. All round later Em- 
perors share the repose of their canonised predeces- 
sor ; and from the death of Charlemagne in 814 
till the accession of Ferdinand I. in 1 531, all the 
sovereigns of the Holy Roman Empire were duly 
crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle. 

You will thus see how historically important is 
this ancient city, further details concerning which 
will appear in my Historical Guide to the 
Rhine, now in course of preparation. 



148 The European Tour 

The existing Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle, indeed, 
is a brief epitome of the history of Germany. Its 
nucleus consists of the Byzantine-Romanesque 
octagon built by Charlemagne, much altered in the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries : its choir is a 
beautiful Gothic work of the fourteenth and fif- 
teenth centuries ; its fantastic roof is of the seven- 
teenth century. The contents are equally varied 
with the fabric itself: a brazen she-wolf of the 
Roman period ; a pine-cone of the tenth century ; 
columns of various ages, brought hither from Rome, 
Treves, and Ravenna ; ancient sarcophagi and 
mediaeval reliquaries, — in short, a stratified collec- 
tion of the antiquities of the Rhineland. For all 
these reasons, you must not omit Aix-la-Chapelle ; 
it is the proper introduction to the study of modern 
European art and history — the first chapter of 
Modern Europe. 

Cologne is the next stage, and it deserves to be 
visited on many accounts, but chiefly as the cradle 
of German painting. 

Do not hurry over Cologne ; it is a town with 
many claims on your close attention. It is rich 
in antiquities, rich in churches, rich in pictures ; 
don't suppose (as most people do) that when you 
have just visited the Cathedral once you have 
" done Cologne ; " on the contrary, this ancient 



The Rhineland 149 

and artistic town needs to be studied far more 
thoroughly than anything you have yet seen, save 
Brussels, Bruges, and Paris. 

Not that I mean to slight the Cathedral; it is 
the natural centre of mediaeval Cologne, and round 
it cluster the art and the handicraft of the Rhine- 
land. But you will make a great mistake if you 
regard it merely as a great church and the seat of 
an archbishop. You must read yourself quite 
otherwise into mediaeval religion if you wish really 
to understand the Middle Ages. Cologne Cathedral 
is, above all things, the Shrine of the Three Kings ; 
and the Three Kings were the chief objects of 
reverence in all the Rhineland before the Reforma- 
tion revolutionised thought on these subjects almost 
as much for Catholics as for Protestants. To go 
to Cologne was to make a pilgrimage to the Shrine 
of the Magi ; and it was to glorify that shrine that 
most of the works of art the town contains were 
originally fashioned. 

The Magi who visited Christ in his infancy at 
Bethlehem were early described as Kings, and made 
three in number, in accordance with a supposed 
prophetic utterance in the seventy-second Psalm ; 
they are already represented in royal barbaric garb, 
and given their mediaeval names of Caspar, Melchior, 
and Balthasar in a mosaic of Theodoric the Goth 



150 The European Tour 

at Ravenna. Their bones were discovered by that 
great unearther of relics, St. Helena, the mother 
of the Emperor Constantine (who also found the 
True Cross), and carried by her to Constantinople. 
Thence they were taken later to Milan, their stay 
in that town making the Adoration of the Magi a 
favourite subject for art throughout the Lombard 
region. When Frederick Barbarossa stormed and 
destroyed Milan, ruining almost every ancient 
building in the city, in 1162, he presented the 
remains of the Three Kings to Archbishop Reinald 
von Dassel, who took them to Cologne. There 
the Archbishop placed them in the little Roman- 
esque cathedral of that period, long since destroyed. 
But succeeding Archbishops felt that the relics 
of the Three Kings deserved a lordlier setting ; 
St. Engelbert, in the beginning of the thirteenth 
century, set on foot the movement for a better 
church; and in 1248 Conrad von Hochstaden 
laid the foundation stone of the present sumptuous 
building, the largest and most famous of Gothic 
edifices. 

Now, why do I tell you all this here at such 
length ? Because, as I go on in this book, I am 
trying to put you gradually more and more into 
the proper frame of mind for understanding and 
appreciating the inner spirit of Europe. If you 



The Rhineland 151 

arrive at Cologne, merely knowing that there is a 
great cathedral there, and then are told how it was 
begun at such-and-such a date by such-and-such 
an architect, and finished in our own day by the 
Emperor William, and that it is so many feet long, 
and so many high, and bears such-and-such a pro- 
portion — I do not know what, and I do not care — 
to St. Peter's at Rome and St. Paul's in London, 
well, you are no nearer than you were to under- 
standing and sympathising with this epic in stone, 
this vast imaginative work of the Middle Ages. 
You must consider it from the point of view of 
the people who built it. And they built it in 
honour of Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, the 
three saints of Cologne, whose names men still 
bear in the valley of the Rhine far more frequently 
than in all the rest of Europe. And in the chief 
recess behind the High Altar of the mighty 
minster they placed in the seat of honour the bones 
of the ancient saints in the Chapel of the Three 
Kings ; where you may see to this day the beauti- 
ful gilded bronze relief of the Adoration of the 
Magi. And all round lie Bishops and Electors 
and Queens, who desired that their dust should 
slumber by the sacred bones ; amongst them, 
the heart of Marie de Medicis. And all along the 
Rhine valley, where men made pilgrimage to the 



152 The European Tour 

shrine at Cologne (as at Basle and elsewhere) you 
will find the Three Kings is the commonest sign 
of the ancient hostelries. But the bones of the 
Magi themselves are no longer laid in the sump- 
tuous chapel prepared to hold them ; they, and the 
gorgeous golden Romanesque reliquary in which 
they were placed shortly after their arrival in 
Cologne, are now preserved for safer keeping in 
the Treasury of the Cathedral. And those are the 
really important facts which it behoves you to 
know beforehand about the Dom at Cologne, the 
final resting-place of the Three Magi. 

To the mediaeval Parisian, Paris was not so 
much the capital of the French kings as the home 
of Ste. Genevieve and the shrine of St. Denis. 
To the mediaeval Kolner, Cologne was not so 
much a great trading city as the shrine of the 
Kings from the East who went by the guiding light 
of the star to Bethlehem. 

But Cologne has other saints scarcely less im- 
portant, — St. Ursula and her 11,000 virgins and 
St. Gereon and the Martyrs of the The ban Legion. 
Each has his or her own church, very interest- 
ing churches too, which you must by no means 
neglect ; worth six weeks apiece of London or 
modern Paris. Then there is the famous Dom- 
bild in the Cathedral, the masterpiece of Meister 



The Rhineland 153 

Stephan, a large winged triptych, which combines 
all three great local cults, having in the centre the 
Adoration of the Magi, and on either side, St. 
Gereon with his knights, and St. Ursula with her 
maidens. It is the finest work of the early Ger- 
man school, and it shows you at a glance the chief 
assemblage of worshipful personages in the Cologne 
of the early fifteenth century. 

Of the other paintings in Cologne I will not 
say much ; but this I will say : you must stop long 
enough to understand the art of the Cologne School^ 
which you can best do by visiting the Cathedral 
and the two Museums (Municipal and Archiepis- 
copal) with the aid of Sir Martin Conway's admi- 
rable little work on " The Early Flemish Artists 
and their Precursors on the Lower Rhine." This 
book you should take with you round Belgium and 
the Rhineland, and you will find it an unfailing 
source of interest and instruction. 

And now I hope you are beginning to perceive 
the things which you must bear in mind while per- 
ambulating Europe. 

A week may be pleasantly spent at Cologne ; you 
will find it much richer than you at first anticipate. 
But by the end of that time you will want to go on 
up the river; a charming trip, to be made leisurely 
by steamer. 



154 The European Tour 

Don't rush the Rhine in a day. Loiter about 
and see the pleasant drives in the Seven Moun- 
tains ; the ruins of the Drachenfels and the many 
quaint castles and old German towns on the way 
to Coblence, which is itself comparatively uninter- 
esting. Below Coblence comes the most pic- 
turesque and castle-studded part of the river j but 
before you pass on to it, I strongly advise you to 
turn aside to Treves (or Trier), a few hours by rail, 
where you will first come across Roman remains 
of any importance. The town is now a living 
museum. Its great Roman gate, the Porta Nigra, 
its Basilica, and its Roman Palace give it excep- 
tional interest; while its noble and ancient churches 
of the transitional period between the ancient and 
the modern world are beautiful in themselves, and 
rich in the possession of the sacred heads of St. 
Matthew the Apostle and the Empress Helena. 
Do not imagine because I say little of Treves that 
it is not important. Stretch a point to visit it if 
possible, and you will feel you have now got to the 
very bottom stratum, the bed-rock of Germany. 

The Gorge of the Rhine from Coblence to Bingen 
is extremely pretty, and crammed thick with castles. 
A day or two spent in exploring it, especially at 
Boppard, St. Goar, Bacharach, and Bingen, will not 
be thrown away. At Bingen, take train to Mainz, 



The Rhineland 155 

or Mayence, an interesting old town. Thence 
you may proceed via Frankfort or Darmstadt or 
Heidelberg to Basle. I do not propose to give you 
any special hints for this itinerary. You can, if 
you like, see the Black Forest on the way; and I 
have purposely omitted many interesting intermedi- 
ate points, such as Speyer and Strasbourg. But you 
cannot see all Germany at once ; and my advice 
to you on a first trip to Europe at least would be 
this, — see Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, the Rhine to 
Mainz, and Treves, and you will then have seen 
what is most important for purposes of culture. 
On a second visit you can fill up the gaps ; and 
even on your first you had better leave Munich, 
Dresden, nay, Nuremberg itself (because it fits in 
with them so well), till your return from Italy. 

Italy, Italy ! Press on to Italy ! Till you have 
seen it, you can only half understand what Europe 
is driving at. 



CHAPTER X 

SWITZERLAND, ETC. 

T1ETWEEN the Rhineland and Italy lie the 
•*-* Alps; and, one way or another, you will have 
to get over them. 

When I say this, is it necessary for me to add 
that I do not desire to disparage Switzerland ? To 
us Europeans, of course (if I may pose as Euro- 
pean), it is, to use a well-worn phrase, the playground 
of Europe ; we love its rich pastures, its dark green 
pine-woods, its brawling white torrents, its snow- 
clad peaks, its subtle depths of crystal glacier. 
To us, it is the symbol of six weeks' relaxation in 
the afternoon of the year from the smoky drudgery 
of London, the feverish excitement of Paris, the 
fierce whir of factory wheels, the dead atmosphere 
of the music-hall. We all love it, and love it with 
justice ; for it is the most beautiful thing unaided 
nature has to show us in this beautiful continent. 
I could gush about Switzerland if I chose ; why, 
its gentians alone are worth months of Mayfair ; 
but I purposely refrain. This is not the place or 



Switzerland, Etc. 157 

the time for gushing. I have undertaken to guide 
your steps aright through Europe ; and I must not 
allow my own private taste for mountains, flowers, 
waterfalls, and earth-sculpture to distract me now 
from the things that are more excellent to the 
American visitor. 

For I recognise that to the American tourist 
Switzerland, beautiful as it is, is a snare and a mis- 
leader. Once get yourself lost among the depths 
of those mountain meadows in May, and I almost 
despair of ever pulling you down to Florence and 
Venice. I remember once how after a spring in 
North Italy, we went about the time when the 
pheasant-eye narcissus stars the Alpine fields, and 
the globe-flower gilds them, to Lucerne and Lu- 
gano. I thought to myself, " Well, now at least, 
after Carpaccio and Luini, mere hills and snow- 
fields and torrents will seem tame to us ! " But 
when we got upon the hill-tops — oh, heavens, 
how I repented that sudden blasphemy ! The 
snow glittered in the sun ; the lakes lay spread in 
sheets of blue below ; the air was heavy with the 
mountain perfume of the sweet-scented daphne ; 
and Italy faded like a dream behind us. We were 
up among God's mountains, stretched on God's 
flowery carpet, and man's works were as naught 
in the dim plains to southward. 



158 The European Tour 

That was a momentary lapse into something 
like poetry ! Forgive me ! Let us return to our 
practical duties as guide, and eschew the gentians. 

Well, once at Basle, I take it for granted the 
tourist will wish to gain at least a passing glimpse of 
Switzerland. But though Switzerland is so lovely 
that the hardest-hearted man can scarcely dash 
through it at one burst by an express train, I take 
it for granted also that most American tourists will 
merely regard it as part of the way to Italy. For 
Italy is the goal ; and Switzerland must be taken 
as merely subsidiary to that prime intention. 

I will therefore treat my Swiss hints essentially 
as hints for the route to Italy. Diverge if you like 
to right or left for the scenery and the moun- 
tains ; but let the main road to Italy govern your 
divagations. If what you want is to see Swit- 
zerland itself, well and good : I approve your 
decision : but — you are not my client. 

We have arrived at Basle, I think. Very well ; 
let Basle itself wait for the moment while we 
pause to reflect on the various modes of approaching 
Italy. 

There is one route which I can unreservedly 
counsel you to reject — and that is the one most 
frequently taken, the shortest, quickest, deadly- 
dullest, and least instructive of any : I mean the 



Switzerland, Etc. 159 

weary way from Paris to Turin by Dijon and the 
Mont Cents. From beginning to end, this ob- 
jectionable line chucks away (there is no other 
word for it) all the interest and beauty and delight 
of the trip. It substitutes a dreary weary railway 
journey for what ought to be one of the treats of 
existence. You should approach Italy joyously, 
reverently. If you take the Mont Cenis route, 
you will approach it dusty, cross, and tired. 
Travellers by this line — the Paris, Lyon, Medi- 
terranee — are hurried first through the dismal 
plain of Central and Eastern France, which is a 
weariness to the flesh, to Dijon and the frontier. 
The whole of this great plain, which alone they 
pass through by daylight, is ghastly in its ugliness ; 
unenclosed fields, threaded by long white poplar- 
bordered roads : the only redeeming point is to 
be found in the outliers of the Jura. After a long 
and tedious day, cooped up in a box with nine 
other sufferers, you reach the Alps — by night. 
The route across them, by the Mont Cenis, is by 
far the least beautiful of all the great Alpine lines : 
it manages to show you as little as possible of the 
glories of the mountains, even by day ; and you 
can only arrange to cross by day by breaking the 
journey somewhere most inconveniently. Then 
you descend on the other side to Turin, which is 



160 The European Tour 

the barest, squarest, least characteristic of Italian 
cities, and by far the least interesting. In one 
word, you approach Italy by this route through the 
back door. Unless you are pressed for time, or 
have arranged the rest of your tour so as to compel 
this undesirable mode of entry, I would say to 
you most emphatically, avoid the Mont Cents. 

On the other hand, if you must go that way 
(and many rush headlong to their own destruc- 
tion), I will add, by all means stop en route at Dijon. 
It is an interesting town, rather Burgundian than 
pure French ; and if you have already visited the 
Low Countries, it will be full of instruction for 
you. Then try to get a day train on over the 
mountains. The French side of the line is com- 
paratively poor, and no part of the route can hold 
a candle to the St. Gotthard ; but the descent on 
the Italian side is through the beautiful valley of 
Susa, which ought to be seen, if possible, by day- 
light. A day or two may be profitably spent at 
Turin in examining the buildings and the excellent 
picture gallery ; only, remember that this is not 
the real Italy, this is merely Piedmont; and the 
collection is a scratch one, not truly local, and 
owing most of its value, indeed, to northern pic- 
tures. You will not have bought this book in 
vain if it only dissuades you from the very 



Switzerland, Etc. 161 

false step of entering Italy first by way of 
Turin. 

The second of the great routes to Italy, and the 
one to be on all accounts recommended, for comfort, 
for beauty of scenery, and for historic interest, is 
undoubtedly the St. Gotthard. This line is in itself 
the most beautiful bit of rail in Europe ; and it 
wholly beguiles the toil of the journey by the love- 
liness of its scenery. You forget you are travel- 
ling in the delight of looking out of the broad 
plate-glass windows at the green cataracts of the 
Reuss or the castled hillocks of the Ticino. If 
you approach it by the Rhine, too, you will also 
have got rid of the dull French plain, and had 
nothing but pleasant scenery from start to finish — 
the Belgian towns, Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, the 
turreted crags of the Rhine gorge, the Black Forest, 
Switzerland, the Italian Lakes, and last of all, 
Milan. This is the ideal route. If possible, take 
it. 

I will describe the Gotthard road more fully in 
the sequel ; for the present I go on to consider the 
two remaining railway routes to Italy. Both are 
a little out of the way, but both are scenically 
interesting. 

The road by the Riviera is simply delightful in 
autumn, winter, and spring; but it is emphatically 
ii 



1 62 The European Tour 

a way for the leisurely traveller. It takes two or 
three days at least of somewhat slow trains, with no 
expresses at all on the Italian portion. But it is 
full of interest, second only to that of the St. 
Gotthard. You can stop first at Dijon, and then 
at Lyons, which has little of interest. Avignon 
shows you the old Palace of the Popes, in a won- 
derful land of rock and dry soil. Aries is rich in 
Roman remains, and has the finest Romanesque 
church and cloisters I have ever seen. A little de- 
tour will take you to Nimes, with the noblest 
classical buildings on the far side of the Alps ; 
each of these three is well worth a visit. Then 
on to Marseilles, and so by the French Riviera to 
Cannes, Nice, Monaco, Monte Carlo, and Mentone. 
It cannot be denied that this is one of the loveliest 
sunny coasts in the world, but it is somewhat de- 
ficient in works of art and antiquity. I recom- 
mend it more for those who wish to spend the 
winter with pleasant surroundings in a moderately 
warm climate than for the passing tourist. 

Continuing the same route beyond the Italian 
frontier (which is passed at the ever-to-be-avoided 
custom-house of Ventimiglia), we follow much the 
same beautiful coast along the Riviera di Fonente 
as far as Genoa. It is a succession of pictures. 
Bordighera, San Remo, and Alassio are here the chief 



Switzerland, Etc. 163 

centres of interest ; all of them are supplied with 
good hotels for a lengthy stay, and are enjoyable 
quarters. The whole of this Riviera, indeed, is 
extremely charming, with its deep blue bays, its 
rocky islets, its high green olive-clad or pine- 
crowned promontories, and its crowded white vil- 
lages gleaming in the sun among orange and lemon 
groves. But it is merely picturesque ; — no more : 
though old-world and delightful, it lacks the higher 
humanising elements of European interest. 

All these routes, — Mont Cenis, Gotthard, 
Riviera, — from one point of view, unite at Genoa, 
whence I will trace them later, via the Riviera di 
Levante, to Rome or Florence. 

The second of the two less important entrances 
into Italy is that by the Brenner. This pleasant 
and attractive route takes off from the Rhine trip at 
Mayence or Heidelberg, whence one can proceed 
in one long dull day through squalid Bavaria to 
Munich. There, in that delightful little pocket 
capital, you may stop as long as desirable ; and 
then continue through the exquisite wooded hills of 
the Bavarian Highlands into the Austrian Tyrol. 
The first stop may be made at Innsbruck, which is 
not only a splendid centre for Alpine excursions, 
but also a picturesque town with great historical 
and artistic attractions. The Tomb of the Empe- 



164 The European Tour 

ror Maximilian in the principal church, guarded by 
the Renaissance bronze statues of his real or myth- 
ical ancestors, will be interesting to every one, but 
especially to those who have seen Bruges, Ghent, 
and Brussels. The line over the Brenner proper, 
though lacking the supreme interest of the unap- 
proachable St. Gotthard, is still particularly beau- 
tiful with a quiet mountainous beauty, seldom rising 
to distinct grandeur. On the southern slope, but 
still well within Austrian territory, a day or two 
may be pleasantly passed at Botzen and Meran, the 
latter of which lies a little way off the main route, 
but is a most characteristic and well-preserved 
Tyrolese city. The national costumes are here 
worn more commonly than elsewhere, and the 
castles around, especially the magnificent Roman- 
esque Schloss Tyrol, are well worth a visit. From 
Botzen, you can descend the valley of the Etsch or 
Adige in one day to Verona, where you will find 
yourself at once in the very heart of true Italy. 

But / do not recommend the Brenner route, either, 
to the visitor who approaches Italy for the first 
time. It is a little too much out of the way, and 
it interpolates Munich at a wrong place in the sys- 
tem. Moreover, Verona is quite too Italian to 
form a good first introduction to Italy. You must 
be somewhat Italianate already before you can 



Switzerland, Etc. 165 

appreciate it. On the whole, I advise you rather to 
return north from Italy by this route, which leads you 
conveniently by gradual stages to Munich, Nurem- 
berg, and Dresden. That, moreover, is the proper 
historical order of evolution : you will then follow 
civilisation in the Eastern Alps northward through 
the Tyrol to mediaeval and modern Germany. 
My general advice to you, then, is strongly this 

— reach Italy first by the Rhine and the St. Got t hard. 
If you follow this course, I feel sure you will never 
regret it. 

Before I return to Basle, however, and set out 
upon our route from that town to Milan, I ought 
to add that if you have time and money, one of 
the very best ways of entering Italy — perhaps 
the best way — is not by any of these four railway 
routes at all, which alone I have been considering, 

— the St. Gotthard, the Mont Cenis, the Riviera, 
and the Brenner, — but by one or other of the 
mountain passes, accessible only to diligences, post- 
cars, cyclists, or pedestrians. In this manner you 
descend upon Italy naturally, so to speak ; you 
understand what the Alps were to earlier ages. 
You toil up the slope of the mountain range on one 
side, among the trees, the fields, the crops, the 
buildings, the tongues of the North ; you descend 
on the other upon the vineyards, the chestnut 



1 66 The European Tour 

groves, the campaniles, the churches, the painted 
villas of the Italian region. Undoubtedly this is 
the most effective way of breaking into Italy ; you 
see it then as the early conquerors, the mediaeval 
pilgrims saw it ; and the reality of the great barrier 
is far more present to you than if you pierce the 
Alps by the mean modern subterfuge of a tunnel. 
But to go over the Simplon or the Spliigen, you 
need good legs or good money ; and I do not 
think the class of travellers who would contem- 
plate this best of all entrances into Italy are likely 
to need my aid in the matter. I write mostly for 
the general public, who are perforce content to 
put up with a seat in a crowded railway carriage. 
For those who prefer and are able to choose the 
more picturesque carriage road, I will add a word 
or two lower down in this chapter. 

Let it be granted, then, as Euclid would say, 
that the tourist has decided upon a general plan of 
campaign by which he enters the Alpine region at 
Basle, and quits it at Milan ; which two towns, 
even if he decide upon a mountain pass over the 
main range, are really the best points of departure 
and destination. Let us follow him out next from 
one to the other. 

Basle itself is a good place to stop at, both for 
its historic Cathedral, and because it is the town 



Switzerland, Etc. 167 

where you can most easily and conveniently study 
at one fell swoop the works of Hans Holbein. 
The Belgian galleries will already have led you up 
to Holbein's place in the evolution of art, and you 
will have seen his handicraft sparingly represented 
both there and in the Louvre ; but you will now 
be able to gauge his productions more fairly, and 
you will afterwards piece out the idea you now form 
of him when you find yourself later at Dresden 
and Darmstadt. Build up your knowledge as you 
go, — that is the great principle ; and if you set to 
work in the proper order (which it is my task to 
point out to you), you will build it up far better 
and more securely than by hap-hazard touring. 

From Basle you can do pretty much as you like 
with regard to a preliminary Swiss tour; consult 
on this point the invaluable Baedeker. (I take it 
for granted you have him always with you.) One 
good way is to go to Berne, and then take a short 
tour through the Bernese Oberland — Grindelwald, 
Murren, the Lakes ofTbun and Brienz, and over the 
Brunig to the Lake of Lucerne, which will give you 
a good glimpse of what Switzerland means ; five 
or six days would suffice for a hurried glance at 
this route, though of course if you want to climb 
an accessible height or two you must take much 
longer. (I need hardly say I am not writing for 



1 68 The European Tour 

mountaineers ; they will naturally go quite else- 
where for information.) Or you may take a 
wider sweep through the same district, including 
the Lake of Geneva ; or you may diverge eastward 
by Zurich and the Uetliberg. These minor tours 
must needs be left to the taste and fancy (and 
purse) of the individual ; they involve no principle. 
If, however, you feel rather disposed to cut 
Switzerland short, which is hard, but your duty, 
then the simplest thing is to go direct from 
Basle to Lucerne ; and if you do this by daylight 
(which I recommend), you will see en route one 
of the loveliest bits of the Jura. Lucerne will 
doubtless detain you a few days, - — a charming old 
German town, with its ancient walls, its tower in 
the water, its numerous turrets, its covered bridges, 
and its exquisite views over the lake and moun- 
tains. Oh, how can one find words for it ! Even 
if you are hurrying through, too, you must at 
least spare time to go up the Rigi and Pilatus. Both 
command magnificent panoramic views, — Pilatus 
the finer, — and both can be climbed either by the 
human legs or, if that be too much, by a cog-wheel 
railway. Endless other delightful excursions may 
be made from the same centre; I recommend 
those to the Biirgenstock and to Sonnenberg. 
Steamers ply down all the arms of the lake, and 



Switzerland, Etc. 169 

afford innumerable opportunities for lesser outings. 
Altogether, Lucerne is a delicious place to stop in, 
especially in early spring or late autumn; in the 
height of the season, it tends to become a genial 
pandemonium of mixed tourists. 

When you have seen enough (or not enough) of 
the Bernese Oberland or of the Lucerne district, 
you may begin to think of getting forward for Italy. 
And here I advise you not to start by train from 
Lucerne ; take the steamer instead up the lake to 
Fluelen, and there join the St. Gotthard line to 
Goeschenen and Airolo. A single day will see you 
through by daylight (if necessary) from Lucerne to 
Milan. But I rather charge you to break it as 
will be described hereafter. The Gotthard line 
runs up the ravine-like valley of the Reuss, a 
foaming torrent of Alpine glacier water, deep green 
in the pools, breaking to white in the cataracts; 
and so up to Goeschenen, where the train enters 
the great tunnel. It emerges at Airolo in the 
valley of the Ticino on the southern side, but still 
in Switzerland. The line itself is so curious and 
so wonderfully engineered with its corkscrew tun- 
nels that you should follow it all the way with the 
excellent maps and plans in Baedeker. Though I 
have crossed it myself dozens of times, I watch it 
each time to this day with never-failing pleasure. 



170 The European Tour 

Indeed, the route is so varied and so beautiful, with 
the changeful beauty of lake and river, green alp 
and snowy mountain, hill-top church and moulder- 
ing castle, — so rich in contrasts of North and 
South, of Italy and Germany, that however often 
you see it you have no time to get tired. This, 
of all the railway routes, is the right road into Italy. 

Beyond Airolo, you descend by various gorges 
the valley of the Ticino, which brawls in cascades, 
now to the right, now to the left of you. After 
passing Bellinzona, with its historic three towers, — 
memorials of the days when the three Forest 
Cantons enslaved the poor Italian population of 
what is now the Canton Ticino, — you catch a 
momentary glimpse of the Lago Maggiore. Thence 
two or three variants of the route lie equally open 
to you, which I will describe more fully in the 
next chapter on the Italian Lakes. Here I will 
only say that if you are pressed for time, you will 
doubtless hasten on to Lugano and Milan ; but if 
you have leisure at your disposal, you will more 
likely decide to linger a little among the Italian 
Lakes, as they are always called, though part of 
them are politically half Swiss, half Italian. 

For the moment, let us say, we sleep this night 
at Lugano. 

As to pedestrians or carriage company , I will only 



Switzerland, Etc. 171 

add that those who mean to go over the Simplon 
must diverge from this route by the Lake of 
Geneva, and leave the railway system at Brieg ; 
while those who intend to try the Spliigen must 
take off at Coire, regaining the rail at Chiavenna, 
near the Lake of Como. The first route brings 
you down most conveniently to Pallanza, on the 
Lago Maggiore ; by the second, you reach the 
Lake of Como at Colico, whence you can proceed 
by steamer to Bellagio and Como, of both which 
more in my next chapter. 

The advice most impressed upon the general 
tourist as to Switzerland may be briefly summed up 
thus — from Basle to Milan by Lucerne and the 
Gotthard^ with a digression, if you like, to the 
Bernese Oberland. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE THRESHOLD OF ITALY 

TTALY ! Italy ! Here we are, at last, in Italy ! 
■*■ One can hardly even write the words without 
a thrill. For when you come to know it, you will 
feel, as I do, that every day spent out of Italy is 
wasted. 

In Italy, I say, though we are only at Lugano, 
which is nominally and politically Switzerland. 
But the arcaded streets, the gay bright villas, the 
faces of the people, the aspect of nature, above all, 
the Luinis in the church by the Lake, will show you 
at once that though the soil may be Swiss, the 
atmosphere is Italian. 

And now we must really have a word or two 
together about our route through Italy. We must 
decide our future plans while we loiter, lotus-eating, 
among the lovely Italian Lakes. On this point I 
will speak with no uncertain voice. One course 
alone lies plain before you. Go first to Milan, and 
then straight to Florence ! 

My reasons for this advice I will detail to you at 
the end of this chapter (no : in the next : but see 



The Threshold of Italy 173 

later); meanwhile, let us discuss our more immediate 
plans ; and while you are dallying about this region 
of lake and mountain, you will have time to perpend 
the counsel I give you. Read through Chapters 
XI. and XII. before you go to Milan. 

Roughly speaking, there . are three main Italian 
Lakes, Maggiore, Lugano, and Cotno, though there are 
also many minor sheets, like Varese and Orta. 
(I put Garda aside in a separate category.) On a 
first visit you may safely confine yourself to these 
three larger ones. Once more, let me beg you not 
to aim at seeing too much, lest you carry away 
with you a phantasmagoric nightmare in place of 
an orderly and well-remembered picture. 

The Gotthard line, by which you have presumably 
descended on the threshold of Italy, boldly disregards 
the basins of the three chief lakes, and cuts across 
from one to the other of them with engineering 
hardihood. If you run straight through from 
Lucerne to Milan (which, unless you are very hard 
pressed for time, I would dissuade you from doing) 
you come down the valley of the Ticino into the 
Lago Maggiore ; but no sooner do you get a good 
view of the lake spread out before you than you 
dart off at an angle and begin to mount again 
the steep mountain ridge that separates that basin 
from the Lugano system. You next reach the 



174 The European Tour 

Lake of Lugano, near the town after which it is 
called, cross over it on a viaduct, and then skirt it 
agreeably for the rest of its expanse, leaving it 
abruptly at the farther end for the ridge which 
divides it from the Lake of Como. This last you 
just spy near the town of Como, and then make 
away incontinently across the hills and the Lombard 
plain to Milan. 

But you will probably want to see something 
more than this passing glimpse of so beautiful a 
region. My general advice to you, then, as to the 
management of this part of your tour would be as 
follows. Do not go through to Lugano at all, but 
book at Lucerne for Locarno on the Lago Maggiore. 
A branch line of the Gotthard will carry you from 
Bellinzona (on the main through route) across a 
marshy plain to Locarno. There sleep one night 
at least, and then take the steamer down the lake 
to Pallanxa. This is a charming trip, and as you 
enter Italy meanwhile, the custom-house examina- 
tion takes place on board, which saves much trouble. 
At Pallanza you can spend a day or two, getting 
accustomed to the outer form of Italy, — the body, 
so to speak, for the soul is not here ; the soul is at 
Florence, Venice, Verona, Siena, Pisa. Pleasant 
excursions by boat will carry you to Baveno, Stresa, 
the Borromean Islands, Intra, and half a dozen 



The Threshold of Italy 175 

charming and picturesque little churches perched 
high among the mountains. When you have had 
enough of Pallanza, take the steamer to Luino and 
the rail to Ponte Tresa on the Lake of Lugano. 
Thence a steamboat trip of exquisite beauty will 
land you at last at Lugano town ; a capital place for 
a day or two of exploration. In the Luinis of the 
waterside church you will catch your first passing 
hint of the soul of Italy ; but you will not under- 
stand them yet; wait till you have seen Milan. 
Then there is the Monte San Salvatore to ascend 
(by rail if you prefer it) with an admirable view 
'into the endless arms of the blue lake beneath ; 
while a little farther off is the Monte Generoso, 
perhaps the finest Alpine prospect accessible to the 
non-climber, for this too can be reached by the 
ubiquitous cog-wheel railway. You will be tempted 
to stay long at Lugano, no doubt : but you must 
harden your heart to resist the temptation. The 
soul of Italy beckons with its spectral hand in the 
background. 

From Lugano, take the steamer to Menaggio at 
one of the upper ends of the many-branched lake, 
and thence zigzag your way by the beautiful little 
mountain railway, one of the loveliest lines in the 
world, across the high ridge to Menaggio on the 
Lake of Como. (I am astonished at myself that I 



176 The European Tour 

can write of it all with such mere guide-book cool- 
ness.) From Menaggio, cross by the steamer over 
the lake to Bellagio (only one g, if you please, Mr. 
Printer) ; and there stop as long as time will permit 
you. Or rather, tear yourself away as soon as you 
are able to bear the wrench ; for Bellagio is one of 
the Paradises of Europe. You can make endless 
trips up and down the lake, to Dongo and Musso 
and other picturesquely dirty vine-trellised villages ; 
and you will here learn at least to love the soil 
of Italy. Make this trip in autumn, if possible, 
when the grapes are ripe; that is the time to see 
at its best the rich rural loveliness of the over- 
grown lake-region. 

From Bellagio take the steamer down the lake to 
Como, and thence on to Milan. This is the ideal 
tour of the Italian Lakes, and if you adopt it you 
will thank me for sketching it out for you. 

At Como you may see the Cathedral, if you 
like ; but how can I advise you ? We are now in 
real Italy, and at every step objects of interest cluster 
so thick that I hardly know how to choose between 
them for you. You cannot possibly see all (un- 
less you intend to devote a lifetime to Italy — as 
indeed why should n't you ?) therefore I must 
needs make some selection for you. Let me illus- 
trate this painful embarrassment of riches by the 



The Threshold of Italy i jy 

case of the route from Como to Milan. And 
please bear in mind that here I am not telling you 
to go and see these things but rather to forego 
them. Well, between Como and Milan you have 
a choice of two ways, each of which will take you 
past a place of immense artistic interest, — and 
you must stop for neither. One is the Gotthard 
main line, which goes by Mon%a, where there is a 
Gothic Lombard Cathedral of the fourteenth cen- 
tury, erected on the site of Queen Theodolind's 
far earlier sixth-century barbaric building. For 
Monza was Queen Theodolind's town, the royal 
city of the Lombard conquerors of North Italy; 
and in the Cathedral you might still see her sar- 
cophagus (if I would allow you) and learn from the 
frescoes how she burned the nails of Christ into 
her head red-hot. The Iron Crown of the Lom- 
bards which Theodolind formed from the nail pre- 
served by the Empress Helena may still be seen 
here; a hoop of gold encircles the sacred relic, 
and has girt the foreheads of many Emperors, real 
or false, including Charles V., Ferdinand of Aus- 
tria, and Napoleon I. The treasury is rich in 
similar ancient relics ; but you have no time to see 
them. The alternative route takes you past Sa- 
ronno, where is a famous Sanctuary of the Blessed 
Virgin, in which Luini is said to have taken refuge 



178 The European Tour 

after a homicide in self-defence, and for which 
he painted perhaps his finest series of frescoes. 
These frescoes are among the loveliest things of their 
sort in Italy ; but if you turn aside to see them, there 
will be no end to it. You will spend the rest of 
your life between here and Florence, and totter in, 
at last, a gray-haired man, to die of old age at Siena. 

So I say it sternly : go straight on from Bellagio 
or Como or Lugano to Milan. 

And how about Milan ? Well, it is the fashion 
with picturesque-loving tourists to sneer at Milan, 
because it happens to have tolerably broad streets 
and a modern municipality. Item, it is also com- 
paratively sanitary for an Italian city ; and it cer- 
tainly lacks as a whole the quaint charm and 
attractiveness of Verona or Padua. If you listen 
to the average traveller who has " done " Milan in 
a day, you will learn that it has nothing of interest 
except its Cathedral. That is about as superficial 
a view as you could well take of it; it reminds 
me of a friend who could not occupy himself for 
more than three days in Paris. I have visited 
Milan a round dozen of times at least, revelling in 
its antiquity : and each time I desire to make my 
visit longer than the last one. 

To me, indeed, the Cathedral is the least among 
the joys of Milan. The town is a museum of art 



The Threshold of Italy 179 

and history ; and the environs are simply alive with 
architecture, painting, and antiquarian interest. 

I am not writing a guide to Milan, however; I 
even doubt whether I shall ever reach that point in 
my series ; I am simply trying to put you at the 
proper point of view for seeing it. Milan, then, 
appeals to you most as the first really Italian town 
of importance you have entered ; the place where 
you may begin to understand Italy, or rather, to 
catch some first vague hint of her loveliness, her 
loveableness. Mediolanum was a Gaulish town 
before it was a Roman one ; and it has always 
been the capital of the broad plain of Lombardy, 
the only really rich district in Italy. Yet it con- 
tains comparatively little of Roman antiquity, be- 
cause it was wholly destroyed in 1162 by the 
Emperor Frederick Barbarossa ; on which occasion, 
as you will remember I told you, he conveyed the 
Three Magi, or what remained of them, to his city 
of Cologne. It is the great advantage of a Euro- 
pean tour that facts like these are always thus 
cropping up again in fresh places ; you learn his- 
tory without knowing it, by dint of coming across 
the self-same person in ten different connections. 
Almost the only relic of ancient Roman Milan that 
has survived this destruction by the Redbeard Em- 
peror is a group of sixteen Corinthian columns 



180 The European Tour 

near the Porta Ticinese. If I were personally 
conducting a party of tourists round Milan a la 
Cook (and I can imagine nothing more delightful), 
I would take them first to see those columns, in order 
to make them understand that the spot on which we 
stand is classic ground, — a city of remote and 
prehistoric antiquity, now wholly overlaid by a me- 
diaeval Renaissance, and modern conglomeration. 

Yet there are no small remains of a Milan only 
just post-classic ; for Frederick Barbarossa spared 
a few churches. And this intermediate period 
between the old and new worlds, of which you 
may have caught faint glimpses already at Aix 
and in the Rhine Country, is one of the most de- 
lightfully romantic points about Europe. There 
is the old church of San Lorenzo, for instance — 
originally, it is believed, a palace of the fourth 
century, and octagonal in shape, like Charle- 
magne's mausoleum. Here for the first time, in 
the chapel of St. Aquilinus, you will come across 
early Christian mosaics of the sixth and seventh 
centuries ; while close by lies the sarcophagus of the 
founder of the church, the Gothic king Ataulph, 
whom readers of Gibbon will no doubt remember 
under the eighteenth-century disguise of " Adol- 
phus." Still more interesting is the other old 
church of San? Ambrogio, founded by St. Ambrose 



The Threshold of Italy 1 8 1 

in the fourth century, in order to contain the 
bones of those very apocryphal saints, Protasius 
and Gervasius, whose whereabouts was revealed to 
him by the extremely unsatisfactory medium of a 
dream. The courtyard or atrium still follows the 
lines of the old building; the existing edifice is 
somewhat later — Romanesque twelfth century 
— but it contains amongst other delicious things 
a marvellous High Altar, a few beautiful reliefs, 
and a number of mosaics of earlier date than the 
existing building. It is this mixture of ages that is 
so delightful at Sant' Ambrogio ; for side by side 
with these ancient Christian works stand glorious 
frescoes by Luini, Gaudenzio Ferrari, and Lanini. 
I cannot describe it all — I wish I might, for Italy 
carries one away. I can only say, that one church 
of St. Ambrose is worth a voyage across the At- 
lantic to see. Nothing of interest in Milan! 
Why, the old stone outside the church where the 
Lombard kings took the coronation oath in the 
ancient fashion, is in itself a wonder. As for 
the early Christian remains, they are worth five 
ordinary northern minsters. 

After mouldering churches like these, the ex- 
quisite white marble Cathedral itself looks painfully 
modern. It is beautiful, of course, but it is not 
the most important thing to see in Milan ; far from 



i 8 2 The European Tour 

it. It belongs to a late and sophisticated age of 
Gothic ; its architecture is not pure j its sculpture 
is largely modern ; and its facade has been defaced 
by a tasteless and incongruous set of Renaissance 
doorways. Only people who mistake bigness for 
greatness could ever think the Cathedral the greatest 
sight of Milan. It resembles too much a vast 
triumph of confectionery, — one of those white iced 
cakes which stand as advertisements in the pastry- 
cook's window. And having said this much 
against it, I may add per contra that it is one of the 
loveliest buildings in the world : its roof is unique 
in its way, and truly marvellous ; and its interior 
(if only one can forget the imitation painted fret- 
work of the ceiling) is extremely impressive. You 
must see the Cathedral, of course ; it is a sight to 
see: but for heaven's sake don't go away and sup- 
pose that seeing the Cathedral is seeing Milan. 

No ; the things to see in Milan are the glorious 
old churches, and, above all, the pictures. I do not 
mean the ruined fresco of the Last Supper, which 
most visitors go to look at with pious care because 
they understand it was once Leonardo da Vinci's, 
and because they have been told (quite rightly) 
that Leonardo is one of the greatest geniuses that 
ever lived on our planet. The Last Supper is 
a Leonardo no doubt, the finest thing Leonardo 



The Threshold of Italy 183 

ever painted; but as scarcely anything remains of 
it save a few mouldering outlines, I do not regard 
it now as a sight of the first importance. But the 
Br era ! At the Brera you will get your first 
glorious glimpse of Italian painting on Italian soil ; 
you will see the whole wealth of the Lombard 
school displayed before you ; you will admire the 
frescoes by Luini, Foppa, Bramantino, and Gau- 
denzio Ferrari, sawn out of Lombard churches; 
you will learn to know Borgognone, and Ber- 
nardino de' Conti, and the old A4ilanese painters, as 
well as the later group of half Florentine artists who 
took their inspiration from the visitor Leonardo. 
The Brera alone takes weeks to see thoroughly. 

And here let me impress upon you one good 
general principle : while you are at Milan, devote 
yourself especially to the Milanese and Lombard artists 
and artificers. You will find at the Brera many 
exquisite works of other schools, pre-eminent 
among which is Raphael's Sposalizio^ the loveliest 
and sweetest work of his Peruginesque period, 
before the Renaissance spoiled him. Now, this is 
undoubtedly the most famous picture in the collec- 
tion ; and it is the habit of the careless tourist, who 
is governed by mere names, and has read his 
guide-book, to walk with a casual glance to right 
and left through the vestibule containing the price- 



184 The European Tour 

less and unique works of the Lombard fresco 
painters; then to stroll with an approving but 
condescending eye through the rooms devoted to 
the Venetians and Brescians; but to stand long in 
rapt contemplation (very cheap and easy under 
the circumstances) before the beautiful Raphael. 
Well, it is beautiful ; to my mind, after the Gran 
Duca, the most beautiful thing Raphael ever 
painted ; and if he had stopped short at that point, 
he would have done much better. But it is not 
the chief thing one should study at Milan. Milan 
is a whole, and Milan is Lombard. There is a 
Madonna by Luini hard by which runs Raphael 
close: there are Lombard pictures here whose like 
you cannot see elsewhere. Therefore I say to you, 
study these other things if you like — the Vene- 
tians and Umbrians ; of course you must study 
them: but study above all things here at the Brera 
the Lombard masters who belong to the district. 
Try to understand first the oldest men, — Foppa 
and Borgognone. Then go on to understand how 
from them proceed Bernardino de* Conti, Braman- 
tino, and in a sense Montagna. After that, look 
at the influence of Leonardo da Vinci, and see how 
far his powerful individuality transformed the Lom- 
bard taste in Luini, Cesare da Sesto, BoltrafHo, and 
the others. You will find many old Lombard 



The Threshold of Italy 185 

traits persisting in these Leonardesque scholars ; 
and you will also find, if you look close, how the 
Lombard spirit itself affected Leonardo. In one 
word, use Milan as a key to the Lombard soul. 
You may comparatively neglect for the present 
the non-Lombard artists. On your way north 
again, you must spend a day or two at Milan once 
more, and then you will be able to place them 
better. 

In order to understand the connection of the 
native Lombard works, however, with their place 
and time, you ought not to study them only in 
museums, divorced from their surroundings. That 
is the sure way to miss their meaning. Remember 
that all these pictures were painted for churches, as 
frescoes on the walls or as altar-pieces, and that 
they are rudely torn at the Brera from the circum- 
stances that begot them. As a corrective of this 
error, I advise you, in between your many visits to 
the Brera (for you must visit it often), to look well 
at the little church of San Maurizio, an oratory 
originally erected by King Sigismund to the 
Teutonic soldier saint, and later belonging to a 
nunnery, whose Nuns' Choir behind the public 
church is about as big as the main building. Here 
you will see numerous frescoes of Luini and others 
in situ ; in the place of honour, the martyrdom of 



1 86 The European Tour 

the patron, St. Maurice ; and, to balance it, King 
Sigismund presenting the original church to the 
saint whose name it bears. Then, in other fres- 
coes, you get the donor of the existing church, with 
his wife, and their personal patrons. Almost all 
the remaining frescoes are those of female saints, 
the great patronesses of virginity, as is right in the 
church of a nunnery, — St. Cecilia, St. Ursula, St. 
Apollonia, St. Scholastica, St. Agnes, and so forth. 
The High Altar has for its altar-piece the Adora- 
tion of the Magi, — the Three Kings of Cologne, 
whose bones, you will recollect, reposed so long in 
Milan. The Nuns' Choir behind has more virgin 
saints, together with the great plague patrons, St. 
Roch and St. Sebastian, symbolical of the secular 
work of the sisters as attendants on the suffering. 
Taken in this spirit, you see that the church tells a 
story as a whole ; every work of art in it is there 
for a definite purpose. You cannot therefore truly 
jud^e of such works apart from their surroundings ; 
when you find them sawn out or torn away to place 
in museums — mere memberless torsos — you 
must always enquire for what place they were origi- 
nally intended. So and so alone can you really 
understand them. And it is to tell you all this 
that I have designed these Guide-books. 

If you take Milan in this spirit, you will find it 



The Threshold of Italy 1 87 

an endless joy; you will learn that the Cathedral 
is the least of its attractions. Why, there is the 
church of St. Eustorgio alone, hardly noticed by 
most visitors, yet containing the Chapel where 
the bones of the Magi were long preserved, with the 
very sarcophagus which held them ; and also the 
gorgeous Cappella Portinari (too gorgeous, alas !) 
with a lovely frieze of angels, and with exquisite 
frescoes, not to mention the magnificent Gothic 
tomb of St. Peter Martyr, which alone is worth 
spending a day at Milan to visit. Indeed were it 
in France or England, it would be a famous object 
of pilgrimage. If you care for beautiful things, 
you could spend weeks and weeks in exploring 
these lesser churches; and what you find in the 
churches still occupies its proper place, and gives 
you the right clue to the dismembered fragments 
you meet in the museums. 

Do not, however, for a moment suppose I have 
given a bare enumeration of the indispensable 
things to be seen in Milan. Indeed, when I come 
to reckon these up, I am fairly staggered in my 
own mind, and can't imagine how I am ever to 
get you away to Florence. For this is Italy ; and 
now you can begin to realise the vast and perplex- 
ing variety of beautiful or interesting objects which 
Italy flings lavishly in your path at every street 



1 88 The European Tour 

corner. Why, there is the Museo Poldi-Pezzoli, 
here a very secondary sight, after you have finished 
with the Brera (as who should say, exhausted the 
ocean) ; it will give you food for many days' sus- 
tenance — pictures, decorative arts, and objects of 
antiquity. Then there is the Ambrosiana, with its 
paintings and drawings ; there is the municipal 
Salone ; there is the mediaeval Piazza dei Mercanti ; 
there are more things than I can mention even in 
brief enumeration. For I am not now writing a 
guide to the city. Really to see Milan would 
require a long year ; to know it would take the best 
part of a lifetime. 

And in Italy, too, you will for the first time 
begin to understand that art does not mean merely 
pictures and statues. It is a pervasive spirit that 
animates the whole world beyond the Alps; its 
manifestations are everywhere. The Great Hos- 
pital of Milan, — the Ospedale Maggiore, — for 
example, is a vast brick building, still used for its 
original purpose as a hospital. A vast brick build- 
ing ! — elsewhere that would mean a big ugly 
square block of utilitarian masonry. But this 
hospital is a half-Gothic, half-Renaissance master- 
piece which affords you some idea of what a style 
of architecture might be if based upon brick, with 
honest adherence to the true principles of brick- 



The Threshold of Italy 1 89 

iness. The exquisite beauty of its terra-cotta 
mouldings and decorations makes it a thing of 
delight ; you can spend an hour with pleasure in 
wandering round its nine courts and observing its 
detail. Stroll about Milan and look for lovely 
things like these, or like the delicious equestrian 
figure of the Podesta Tresseno on the Palazzo 
della Ragione, or like the ancient carved stones in 
the atrium of Sant* Ambrogio, or like the lovely 
Luinis in San Giorgio al Palazzo, or like Bra- 
mante's sacristy in San Satiro, with the later Foppa's 
sweet baby angels, — and do not imagine Milan 
is a mere modern French town because you spend 
all your time in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, 
and stare at the brand-new monument to Leonardo 
da Vinci. If any man says he does not care for 
Milan, he convicts himself at once of never having 
looked for it. 

As to the neighbourhood of the city, and the 
Lombard plain, what can I say ? Sirens innumer- 
able stretch their arms to lure you away from your 
true lady, Florence. Resist them all, though 't is 
hard work resisting. Bergamo will try to tempt 
you to its picturesque hill-top citadel ; Brescia will 
offer you its Morettos and its Roman remains ; 
Pavia, Piacenza, Cremona will all call to you from 
many sides with alluring voices. Resist them, 



190 The European Tour 

and be strong ; your goal is Florence ! But stay, 
I must just allow you to see the Certosa dl Pavia. 
It is but half an hour off by rail, Lombard of the 
Lombards, closely bound up with Milan and her 
greatest dynasty ; and one long day will suffice to 
give it a first visit of exploration, a reconnaissance, 
so to speak. Here you will find out what I mean 
when I talk about the pervasiveness of art in Italy j 
for it will occupy you for a couple of hours to 
examine the medallions and decorations on the 
unfinished facade. If it were finished, I don't 
know how you could avoid spending the night on 
the spot, and going on with your examination of 
that masterpiece on the morrow. Baedeker, who 
is always culpably stingy of his time, says, give the 
place two hours. Two hours would not suffice to 
walk round it physically ! Go over in the morn- 
ing, see what you can before lunch, take an al 
fresco dejeuner in the garden of the little inn out- 
side (there ! I have broken for once my general 
rule of ignoring hotels and " practical information " 
— which usually means advertisement) and return 
to the monastery in the afternoon to complete 
your cursory inspection. As to knowing it, that 
would be a task of many weeks at least. When 
you have finished looking through it, with its end- 
less wealth of decorative detail, you will run back 



The Threshold of Italy 1 9 1 

to Milan feeling the truth of what I say, that in 
Italy art and life are conterminous. 

I had meant to put into this chapter a few 
general remarks about the order of the great Italian 
cities ; but I see Milan alone has delayed me so 
long that I must defer them now to another 
chapter. Yet I will leave unaltered what I have 
already written. Quod scripsi, scripsi. u Why 
can't he run his pen through it," you will say, 
" instead of treating his readers so cavalierly ? " 
Not so ; I do it not without a meaning. It helps 
to let you feel how Italy runs away with one. I 
sat down at this chapter to write of Milan, deter- 
mining to cut it as short as I could ; I did cut it 
short, hardly dwelling at all, for example, on the 
riches of the Brera, and omitting all mention of 
whole aspects of the town which I should have 
liked to dilate upon ; yet I could not keep it down 
to what I originally intended. The truth is, if 
there were no Florence and no Venice, Milan or 
Padua or Verona would be a world's wonder. 
The Certosa di Pavia alone, of which I dare say 
you never read till to-day, far outweighs any two 
average northern cathedrals. Yet because they 
are in Italy, we judge them all by an Italian 
standard. Fancy wasting your time over Win- 
chester or Salisbury, with the Certosa unvisited ! 



CHAPTER XII 

THE GREAT ITALIAN CITIES 

T\^TOW that you are in Italy, the question next 
■*• ^ arises, in what order ought you to visit the 
Italian cities ? 

On this point, my opinion is quite explicit. 
The proper order is — Florence, Venice, Rome, 
Naples. 

I know there is very little chance of your taking 
my advice. The railways, and the natural config- 
uration of the country have made another order 
so much more easy. The tourist is tempted by 
convenience of travel to go from Milan to Venice, 
taking Verona and Padua on the way ; then from 
Venice to Florence, and so on to Rome and 
Naples. I grant that this is the easiest plan ; and 
if you intend merely to rush through Italy on a 
pleasure jaunt, scampering through the whole thing 
in three or four weeks — well, the order of the 
visit won't much matter to you. But if you really 
want to see Italy, however hurriedly — to gain a 
glimpse of what Italy has meant for humanity — 



The Great Italian Cities 193 

to learn a filial affection for that great mother of 
our arts, our literatures, our culture — then I say 
to you emphatically, begin with Florence. And not 
only that, but learn Florence pretty well before 
you go elsewhere. For this I will give you ample 
reasons hereafter. For the present, I will sum 
them up in a single sentence : Florence is the whole 
book ; the other towns are but scattered pages. 

It is a mistake, therefore, to visit Venice before 
you have seen Florence. But there is a far deeper 
and more fatal mistake against which I would most 
earnestly warn you, — a mistake very commonly 
made, especially by Americans, yet one which 
vitiates your whole idea of Italy, — one which 
often gives people a distaste for it at once, and pre- 
vents them from learning to love it like a mother. 
Don't go first to Rome. I regard that point as of 
so great importance that I will even repeat it in all 
the dignity of capitals : Don't go first to 
Rome. If you do, you will never so well under- 
stand Italy. To see Venice before you have seen 
Florence is a serious mistake ; to see Rome before 
you have seen Florence is a fatal blunder. 

Why ? Well, you will learn why at greater 
length when we come to deal with Rome in a sep- 
arate chapter ; but I will add here by anticipation 
two excellent reasons : First, because Venice and 

13 



194 The European Tour 

Florence are beautiful pictures, while Rome is a dry 
but valuable historical volume ; and if you begin 
with the dry book, you will think Italy a task, 
while if you begin with the beautiful picture you 
will think it a joy and a privilege. Second, because 
Rome had never any art of her own, nor even any 
continuous art of any sort ; she merely borrowed 
now and then a distinguished Tuscan, or a distin- 
guished Umbrian, or a distinguished Venetian, and 
set him to decorate some church or some palace. 
Therefore you can never understand the growth 
and evolution of art at Rome; you must study the 
causes which produced the Tuscan or the Umbrian 
in Tuscany and Umbria. Moreover, Rome is so 
vast and so complex that if you begin with Rome 
you can never understand anything; but if you 
have learnt elsewhere, and go to Rome with your 
ideas upon certain periods of art made up, you can 
attack that huge heterogeneous mass with some 
chance of understanding it. For these and for 
many other reasons which will come out as we 
proceed, I would strongly dissuade you from going 
first to Rome, and just as strongly advise you to 
go first to Florence. 

Rome is a capital, and people think therefore 
they should see Rome first and the provinces after- 
wards. But this is a fallacy. Florence and Ven- 



The Great Italian Cities 195 

ice were never provinces as compared to Rome ; 
on the contrary, they were great centres which 
gave their arts and literature to Rome. Besides, 
the peculiar government of the Papacy resulted in 
this, — that a Florentine Pope invited Florentine 
artists to Rome, a Sienese invited Sienese, and an 
Umbrian Umbrians. Venetian cardinals wanted 
Venetian art ; and often a break of inartistic Popes 
from out-of-the-way places results in a break in 
the history of decoration and architecture in the 
Papal city. Hence there is no continuity at all in 
Rome; it consists of scraps and odds and ends 
from everywhere. You could find no worse town 
in which to study the evolution of the arts, though 
you can find no better one in which finally to 
compare the finished products. The moral is, go 
last to Rome. See it after you have learned what 
Italy aims at. 

Again you will say, " But Rome has so old and 
continuous a history ; there and there only we get 
back to the roots of things. Ought we not to 
begin at the fountain-head ? " I think not. It is 
all too confused, too complex, too manifold. 
There are three or four Romes^ — ancient, imperial, 
Papal, Renaissance, modern. You will feel that 
even after you have been to Florence and Venice ; 
the multiplicity and variety of Rome will still stun 



196 The European Tour 

and puzzle you. How much more, then, if you 
approach the Vatican, knowing nothing of Raphael ; 
and fly from it straight to the Lateran, knowing 
nothing of early Christian art; and thence to the 
Capitol, knowing nothing of antique sculpture ? 
Let yourself down gently. Learn one thing at a 
time. To go straight to Rome is to start at once, 
as it were, on Chinese idioms, ancient Egyptian 
hieroglyphs, Hindustani grammar, and the Welsh 
language. 

All this will become clearer to you as we 
proceed with our survey. For the present, if 
you have learned to trust my judgment at all, I 
will recommend you to place your life in my hands 
and go straight to Florence. 

For the educational value of Florence is something 
quite unique and exceptional. It is the one place 
where you can get a full and connected view of 
the growth of the arts in modern Italy. It is quite 
true you will find nothing antique worth speaking 
of at Florence, — nothing, that is to say, save the 
sculptures of the Uffizi, which are not really local, 
but were collected at Rome by a Medici cardinal. 
The town itself, though it goes back to Roman 
times, has scarcely a trace to-day of its Roman 
origin. It is purely a Christian Tuscan city. But 
that, I venture to think, increases its utility as a 



The Great Italian Cities 197 

living object lesson. You are not distracted by 
too many subjects at once, — though, indeed, the 
rise of Florentine painting, Plorentine sculpture, 
Florentine architecture, and Florentine decorative 
arts will supply you with ample work, if it comes 
to that, for three or four lifetimes. Nowhere in 
the world can you gain so clear and connected an 
idea of the origins of the Christian civilisation in 
whose midst we live as in this town of Florence. 

Therefore I say, spend as long a time as you can 
spare in Florence. If you are going to be six 
months in Europe, for example, I should allot 
two months of that time at least to the Tuscan 
capital. If a year, then give it two months of 
autumn, before you see Rome, and two months of 
spring, later, to revise your impressions. The 
more you see of Florence the more will you learn 
that she is indeed the standard. You must gauge 
the development of the arts elsewhere by the light 
of the exceptionally continuous development you 
will find in Florence. 

Siena and still more Ravenna begin earlier ; but 
they end sooner. Venice and Rome are spas- 
modic ; they have gaps and lacunae. But Florence 
is a whole; she is constant and continuous. She 
embraces all arts (except perhaps mosaic, which is 
sparingly represented) ; and she forms the chief 



198 The European Tour 

models. She is far and away the queen in 
post-Roman Italy. 

All that was ever great in Italy came from the 
Tuscan blood. Literature, science, and art appear 
everywhere just in proportion as that blood is 
dominant. Florence early rose in modern times to 
be the capital of the central mass of the Etruscan 
race ; and Florence therefore sums up in herself all 
that is most distinctively Italian in Italy. No 
town was ever so beloved. It chains one with a 
chain of affection like a human mistress. When 
you go back to it after absence, you will find your- 
self smiling involuntarily at every street corner. 
Florence eats herself into your heart. She is loved 
of her lovers. 

My general advice, then, is this : go direct in the 
first instance from Milan to Florence. Spend as 
long a time there as you think you can spare. 
Then make your way back to Venice. Give 
Venice three or four weeks — I know only too 
well how inadequate is that time, but I know also 
you cannot help it. Then return by Florence to 
Rome, and thence to Naples. 

As for the minor Italian cities, I know not what 
to advise. My heart within me is torn in two 
directions. On the one hand, I cannot endure to 
say, " Omit Verona, Padua, Siena, Perugia, Pisa." 



The Great Italian Cities 199 

It is too distressing. On the other hand, I feel so 
deeply the importance of concentrating yourself on 
the three most instructive towns, Florence, Rome, 
and Venice. More than ever as I write these lines 
do I realise the truth of what I said at the begin- 
ning, — it is folly to give three years to a college 
" education " and then refuse three months to that 
vast comprehensive university, Italy. Let us com- 
promise, then, and say, on a first visit, I will try to 
indicate a convenient time for just a glimpse of 
these four or five most important secondary 
cities, — each of them far richer than anything 
out of Italy. 



CHAPTER XIII 

FLORENCE 

'"jp'^HE Greeks made Aphrodite rise glorious from 
-■• the foam of the sea ; even so I always 
think of Florence, the Queen of Beauty in our 
modern world, as rising glorious from the yeasty 
chaos of the early Middle Ages. 

There is only one Florence. Get there as fast as 
you reasonably can ; stop there forever ; and go 
back again afterwards at frequent intervals. What- 
ever this advice may lack in logical coherence it 
amply makes up for in sound practicality. 

I met an American lady of a certain type one 
day at a comfortable little hotel near Santa Maria 
Novella. By way of beginning conversation, I 
asked her how long she meant to stay in the town. 
" Three days," she answered ; then, seeing my 
face fall, she added quickly, " But a week would 
not be too long." She was quite right. A week 
is not too long for Florence. The same thing may 
be said of a month, a year, a lifetime. 

Florence is the epitome of the history of the 
arts, — not a dry and formal epitome, nor yet a 



Florence 201 

history, nor a museum ; but the arts themselves, 
telling with exquisite grace their own inner story. 

Therefore the one piece of advice on which I 
insist above all others in a European tour is this : 
spend as large a proportion of your visit as you can 
possibly spare in Florence. Whatever else you see or 
leave unseen, do not dock for time the most im- 
portant thing in Europe. 

As to the route thither from Milan — suppos- 
ing you to have taken my advice and gone there 
direct, without turning aside to see Venice (which 
advice I am perfectly certain you will reject), — 
there are two ways possible. The flesh will call 
for one, and the spirit for the other. The first 
and easiest route is by Bologna (which you had 
better omit for the present), and thence by a de- 
lightful mountain line, over the main range of the 
Apennines. The second route, which I recom- 
mend by preference, is by Genoa and Pisa. This 
is also a very picturesque line, and though in some 
ways less comfortable, it gives you the advantage 
of being able to see Pisa itself en route. As for 
Genoa, I should say you can easily go past it. 
The second of these two routes is the only one I 
will deal with here ; since the line by Bologna 
must be naturally considered when we run back to 
Venice. For the road between Milan and Venice 



202 The European Tour 

direct (if you refuse to follow my plan, and prefer 
to follow your own nose), see a later chapter. 

From Milan to Genoa, you cross the Maritime 
Alps just at the point where they begin to lose 
their individuality and to merge into the Apennines. 
The ascent is pleasing ; the descent on the other 
side is extremely beautiful, especially as you 
approach the outskirts of Genoa, with its villa- 
covered hills ringing a bay which has no rival but 
Naples. Unless you have plenty of time to spend in 
Italy, however, I do not advise you to stop at Genoa. 
The town and harbour, to be sure, are fine and 
finely situated, and the palaces are interesting ; 
but this is not the true Italy. Genoa was never an 
artistic centre ; its galleries are full of Vandycks 
and Guidos. In other words, it has no native 
school, and its collections are those of mere 
amateurs who gathered works mostly of the late 
and less interesting periods. Of course, if you 
have plenty of time to spare, it is well to spend a 
week in Genoa after you have seen Venice, Rome, 
and Florence ; because you will then be able to 
understand its Carracci, its Garofalos, its Domeni- 
chinos, its Tintorettos, and to understand their re- 
lation to other pictures elsewhere. But most of 
its art is practically the same as what you will see 
in the private galleries of the Roman nobles ; and 



Florence 203 

the private galleries of Rome are certainly among 
the least important collections to be visited in Italy. 
Therefore I say, don't waste time on Genoa which 
would be better bestowed in Venice or Florence, 
or on a glimpse of Siena, Orvieto, Padua. 

Continue straight on, then, from Milan to Pisa. 
The line beyond Genoa goes through the Riviera 
di Levante, perhaps the loveliest bit of coast in 
Italy, save only the shore about Sorrento and Amalfi. 
Too literally, alas, goes through it rather than along 
it ; for it is almost all tunnel. You just catch a 
glimpse of some blue bay, with a nestling white 
town, and a tall campanile; and, whisk, before you 
know it you are in utter darkness once more, 
emerging for a minute at the tunnel's end upon 
another bay, another town, and another disappoint- 
ment. Leisurely travellers often descend near 
Recco or Santa Margherita to drive across the best 
bits ; it is really the only way of seeing the 
scenery. 

Hard-hearted as I am, and bent on your intel- 
lectual and aesthetic improvement, I really cannot 
hurry you past Pisa without a couple of nights at 
least in that entrancing city. And indeed, Pisa is 
the proper prelude to Florence ; for when Tuscany 
began to raise its head once more after the barba- 
rian deluge, it was Pisa that aspired to be the 



204 The European Tour 

leader of Tuscany. She made herself great with a 
spasmodic greatness, which left a stamp for all 
time on the glorious cluster of buildings about the 
Cathedral and the Campo Santo. Stop and see 
these buildings ; they are unique in the world in 
their position and grouping. They stand all by 
themselves in a little square or Piazza just at the 
outskirt of the town, unspoilt by the interference of 
other buildings. The check to Pisa's greatness 
has given us this treat ; elsewhere the growth of 
population has crowded up the cathedral squares 
with mean modern houses ; at Pisa alone do we 
see a mediaeval group as the mediaeval builders 
meant us to see it. The cluster consists of the 
Duomo itself, the Baptistery, the Campo Santo, and 
that exquisite Campanile of Tuscan-Romanesque 
architecture which the vulgarity of the world has 
christened after an accidental circumstance as 
" the Leaning Tower." Here we have one of the 
most perfect specimens of early Italian art, one of 
the loveliest buildings ever conceived in the brain 
of man; and the world with one accord goes to 
look at it and marvel at it — because it happens to 
be a few feet out of the perpendicular ! 

At Pisa, too, you get the beginnings of Tuscany. 
The architecture of the Cathedral is the oldest of 
all modern Italian churches of the first rank ; in 



Florence 205 

the smallness of the dome you see the first hint of 
Siena, Florence, and St. Peter's at Rome. Re- 
member this order of historical succession, and 
trace back the later designs by and by to their 
origin at Pisa. Then in sculpture you have Niccolo 
Pisano, whose noble pulpit in the Baptistery you 
must examine closely; while in the museum you will 
see the other lovely pulpit of the school, tracing 
there and at Siena the gradual decline through his 
son Giovanni and his other successors. For those 
who can do it, indeed, a tour of the Pisano influ- 
ence, in the order of Pisa, Siena, Bologna, Florence, 
is deeply interesting ; it shows you the springs of 
Giotto, of Donatello, and finally of Michael Angelo. 
But for the hasty visitor it must suffice, I fear, to 
gain a general idea at Pisa of these great Pisani, 
and to follow out at Florence the impetus they 
gave to the relatively reactionary sculptors who 
succeeded them. You will then understand that 
Niccolo Pisano, a man born out of due season, was 
one of the greatest and most original geniuses of 
the Middle Ages. His only error was that he came 
too early. 

The worst of this sort of book is this, — that 
as I reach each town I want to write a whole 
book about it. This will never do. I must eet 
on to Florence. We can easily manage it by an 



206 The European Tour 

evening train at the end of our second day at Pisa, 
having spent the daylight hours in the fascinating 
museum. 

So here we are at last in Florence ! 

As to the particular sights to be seen in Florence, 
I have written about them at due length in my 
Historical Guide. Here I will only try to im- 
press upon you why Florence is the most important 
of Italian cities, and the one where you should 
spend as much as possible of your time, at an early 
period of your visit to Italy. 

I have said that the Tuscan element has given 
Italy almost everything that is great and noble 
within it. There are parts of Italy which scarcely 
differ in artistic importance from the world beyond 
the Alps. Piedmont is nothing ; Liguria is nothing ; 
Naples has hardly aught of native art ; when we 
speak of Italy we think really of the district roughly 
bounded on the north by Milan and Venice, and on 
the south by Rome, — in short, in the wider sense, 
Etruria. This is the region where the Etruscan 
blood is found in more or less purity. And it sur- 
vives purest in Tuscany and Umbria, less pure in 
Lombardy and Venetia, hardly at all in modern 
Rome, which lay on the very confines of ancient 
Etruria. That is why Rome had never any art of 
her own. On the other hand, the Tuscan spirit 



Florence "207 

works strongest of all in the central belt, where not 
only Florence and Pisa produced great men and great 
works in every direction, but where even smaller 
towns like Siena, Perugia, Assisi, Cortona, Orvieto, 
Foligno — nay, even mere third-rate burghs, like 
Prato, Pistoia, Spoleto, Chiusi, Fiesole, San Gimi- 
gnano are full of interest. Florence, then, is the 
natural capital of this Tuscan race, to which we 
owe everything great in Italy ; and in Florence more 
than anywhere else we can trace in detail the ten- 
dencies and the mother-ideas of that gifted people. 
Moreover, in Florence the history of art — that 
is to say, of modern art as distinguished from the 
antique — is continuous and uniform. Modern art, 
I say ; and you will therefore find it well to begin 
with Florence before Rome, because Rome gives 
you ancient art as well, and therefore confuses 
you or distracts your attention ; and also because 
the art of Rome is scrappy and discontinuous, only 
to be historically comprehended aright after you 
have seen Florence. Even Venice, again, though 
more original than Rome, is less independent and 
self-sustaining than Florence; for example, in 
painting, she took her earliest works not from 
Venetian hands at all, but from Byzantine Greek 
painters ; and when she began to develop a school 
of her own, she derived it, not directly from either 



208 The European Tour 

Byzantine or Italian sources, but oddly enough 
from the school of Cologne, through her first 
great painter, Giovanni da Allemagna or John the 
German. Later still, her native painters of the 
early Renaissance were largely influenced by their 
education at Padua, where works of the Florentine 
Giotto and the Florentine Donatello (the last- 
named a sculptor) exercised a great effect upon 
the minds and tastes of Mantegna and Bellini. 
So that even Venice cannot be thoroughly under- 
stood till you have seen Florence, whence a large 
part of the influence which formed her schools 
emanated. As for Milan, Brescia, Bologna, and 
the rest, the springs of their art are in a large 
degree Florentine. 

But Florence herself is self-contained and self- 
sufficing. She evolved her own art ; or if she took 
hints from elsewhere, took them only from Tuscan 
Pisa, which you have seen on your way to her, and 
from her equally Tuscan elder sister, Siena. No 
other city of Italy can be thoroughly understood 
till you have understood Florence ; but Florence 
stands alone, her own sole interpreter. 

The revival of art began in Florence. Its first 
faint notes were struck by Cimabue. Then, a 
generation later, she derived from Pisa the net 
results of the school of sculpture instituted by 



Florence 209 

Niccolo Pisano; and these bore fruit in time in 
the grand project for her Cathedral and for its 
glorious Campanile. But it was Giotto who gave 
the great impetus to art in Florence; and every 
other city in Italy derived its later art directly or 
indirectly from Giotto or his followers. You find 
the hand of the master himself everywhere — in 
the frescos of the Madonna dell' Arena at Padua; 
in the Lower Church at Assisi ; in San Giovanni 
at Ravenna ; in the Navicella at St. Peter's in 
Rome, — in short, all over Italy ; but you can 
thoroughly understand him nowhere save in this 
his special city. Were it only for Giotto, who lies 
at the root of all Italian art, it would be necessary 
to visit Florence first. When you consider that 
the school founded by Giotto developed into the 
Renaissance painters in Florence by a natural and 
unbroken evolution, and sent its teachers to every 
other Italian region, you will feel that here alone 
can we study the history of Italian art to the best 
advantage. 

Everything in Florence, indeed, is redolent of 
the soil. Elsewhere Florentines decorated Roman 
churches or Sienese cathedrals ; at Florence Floren- 
tines painted Florentine saints for Florentine altars, 
or carved breathing images of Our Lady of Florence 
for Florentine niches. We get to know the Floren- 
14 



2io The European Tour 

tine Madonna of the Lily, the baby Florentine St. 
John with his reed and scroll, the Florentine Santa 
Reparata with her red-cross flag, as familiarly as 
we know the face of George Washington or the 
American eagle. The features of the Medici 
become quite familiar to us. The ascetic Sant' 
Antonino haunts the walls of San Marco j Ghir- 
landajo's patrons, repeated in a dozen forms, end 
by being our intimate acquaintances. The entire 
life of a mediaeval city comes back to us in its 
fulness ; we wander among palaces the faces of 
whose builders still smile upon us from their 
tombs in Benedetto da Maiano's bronze, or scowl 
under pent brows in Michael Angelo's marble. 

That is the joy of Florence. So much of it 
remains that you can piece it all together as you 
can piece no other city. I take a single example. 
In Santa Maria Novella, you come across the 
tomb of the Patriarch Joseph of Constantinople. Why 
a patriarch of Constantinople at Florence, you 
wonder. Well, in 1438, when the last Byzantine 
Roman emperors still held the city by the 
Bosphorus, but the Turk was pressing forward and 
Christendom was at bay, a great council was held 
at Ferrara to bring about the reunion of the East- 
ern and Western churches. John Palssologus, 
Emperor of Constantinople, and the Patriarch 



Florence 211 

Joseph attended this council. In 1439 it trans- 
ferred itself to Florence ; and while it sat there, 
the Patriarch died and was buried in this church of 
Santa Maria Novella. Now you will afterwards 
go to the Riccardi Palace, which was at that time 
the home of the Medici ; and there, in the dark 
little chapel, made glorious by art, you will see the 
beautiful and fantastic fresco which Benozzo 
Gozzoli painted to represent the journey of the 
Magi to Bethlehem. Here our old acquaintances, 
the Three Kings, typifying as usual the three ages 
of man, are in reality portraits of three famous 
personages of the moment. The oldest king is the 
Patriarch Joseph, appropriately chosen as one of the 
Wise Men from the East ; the middle-aged king is 
the Emperor John Palaeologus, in most regal attire ; 
and the young king is Lorenzo de' Medici in his 
beautiful youth, accompanied by his grandfather 
Cosimo Pater Patriae. I give this as a single 
illustration of the interest which Florence pos- 
sesses. As for the artistic charm of that sumptuous 
pageant, winding slowly through a fairy-land of the 
painter's imagination, you must see the work itself 
before you can form the faintest conception of it. 

Let me din it into you, then, as sedulously as I 
dinned Italy itself. Italy above all things ; and in 
Italy, first and foremost, Florence, Florence, Florence ! 



CHAPTER XIV 

MORE ABOUT FLORENCE 

' g V HE western quarter of the town (to be prac- 
■*■ tical for a moment) is the best in which to 
settle. Personally, I think the nicest part of it is 
the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, which is central 
but airy. There are also excellent hotels and pen- 
sions on the equally sunny Lung' Arno. 

Visit Florence historically, as I have set it forth in my 
Guide. Begin with the two oldest great churches, 
the Franciscan Santa Croce, and the Dominican 
Santa Maria Novella ; then proceed to the Cathe- 
dral, the Campanile, and the Baptistery; after that, 
attack the various picture galleries and/the Bargello. 
You will find six weeks all too short a time just 
for walking through the most important groups of 
objects in the city. I have mentioned in my 
Guide the best order, and called attention to most 
of the indispensable sights. I cannot epitomise it 
here. To chronicle everything in Florence would 
need a book six times as big as would be required 
for Paris, and about forty times the size that would 
be needed, scale for scale, for London. 



More About Florence 213 

In this chapter, therefore, which only aims at 
suggesting to you beforehand the proper point of 
view, I will confine myself to a few special aspects 
of a few of the most important objects. 

I said above, the Franciscan Santa Croce and 
the Dominican Santa Maria Novella. In Florence, 
probably, you will for the first time begin to under- 
stand the importance of these great monastic bodies, 
and the way they each impressed their own ideas 
upon the art they patronised. For example, the 
Franciscans, the Salvation Army of their day, were 
(and are) beggar friars, wedded to poverty, and 
preaching the cross of Christ to the poor and 
neglected. At Assisi you will perhaps find time to 
see later St. Francis's own church, with the frescoes 
by Giotto which represent that ecstatic revivalist 
married in bodily union to his bride, Poverty. 
But for the present, here in Florence, you must 
content yourself with examining this Franciscan 
church of the Holy Cross, full of the Cross itself and 
the Franciscan order which preaches it. You will 
make a great mistake if you go to Santa Croce 
regarding it merely as a church in general where 
you expect to see some good frescoes by Giotto. 
You can only comprehend its inner meaning if you 
bear in mind at every turn that it is a Franciscan 
church, dedicated to the cult of the Holy Cross. 



214 The European Tour 

St. Francis died in 1226, and was promptly can- 
onised in 1228. His followers spread over every 
part of Italy, choosing in each town the poorest 
quarters, and ministering to the needs of the lowest 
classes. In 1294 they began to erect this church 
in Florence, which Giotto decorated with some of 
his finest frescoes. The Holy Cross is ^ its keynote. 
Over the main entrances are three reliefs, repre- 
senting respectively the Discovery of the True 
Cross by the Empress Helena, the Adoration of 
the Cross by all the world, and the Cross appearing 
in the Sky to Constantine. Over the chief gable, 
the Cross is sustained by two marble angels. The 
choir, the holiest part of the building, has frescoes 
of the mythical legend of the Cross, from Adam 
downward, by Agnolo Gaddi. Throughout, the 
Holy Cross gives the subject of the building, and 
knits it all together into a single poem. 

Equally marked is the Franciscan influence. In 
half the pictures in this church, you will recognise 
on saint after saint the coarse brown Franciscan 
robes. The monogram of Christ (I. H. S.), 
adopted as his symbol by San Bernardino of Siena, 
the great Franciscan revivalist preacher, meets you 
at every turn ; one such was affixed on the old 
facade by the saint's own hands. The exquisite 
pulpit, the noblest work of Benedetto da Maiano, 



More About Florence 2 1 5 

is adorned with reliefs from the life of St. Francis 
and the history of his followers — the Confirmation 
of the Franciscan order by the Pope, the Burning 
of the Immoral Books, St. Francis receiving the 
Stigmata, the Death of St. Francis, and the Mar- 
tyrdom of a group of Franciscan Brothers. A 
fresco in the nave by Andrea del Castagno shows 
us side by side St. John Baptist, patron of the 
town of Florence, and St. Francis, patron of this 
church and order. The Bardi chapel contains 
Giotto's famous frescoes of the life of St. Francis. 
Everywhere these two interwoven themes dominate 
the great church, — the Holy Cross and the Fran- 
ciscan order. 

These themes, I say, strike the keynote. But 
they do not exhaust the manifold interest of this 
wonderful building, which alone would repay many 
weeks of study. I will mention a single other feature 
only. One of the many outgrowths of Santa Croce 
is the Medici chapel, built by Michelozzo for Cosimo 
de' Medici, Pater Patriae. It is full of lovely 
works, almost all of them instinct with allusions to 
St. Francis, to the Holy Cross, and to the Medici 
family. I can find room to mention a solitary in- 
stance only ; the beautiful altar-piece in glazed and 
coloured terra-cotta work by Luca della Robbia. 
This has for its central figure the Madonna being 



216 The European Tour 

crowned by angels ; around her stand a group 
of appropriate local saints, — St. John Baptist in 
camel's hair, as patron of Florence; St. Lawrence 
with his gridiron, as patron of Lorenzo de' Medici; 
St. Francis with the Stigmata, as patron of this 
Franciscan Church; and St. Louis of Toulouse, 
the great Franciscan royal luminary. Everything 
here, in short, is full of the ruling Medici, espe- 
cially in their connection with the Franciscan order. 
It is the same with every other chapel in such a 
church. We can only understand it, first in con- 
nection with the church of which it is a member, 
and next in connection with the family to whom 
it belongs, or once belonged. 

Most visitors to Florence go to Santa Croce 
because they are told it is the Westminster Abbey of 
Florence, and they visit chiefly the tombs of Michael 
Angelo, and Macchiavelli, and Galileo, and Alfieri. 
Now, this is a foolish and unworthy way of regard- 
ing a great historical monument. It is putting the 
cart before the horse. Santa Croce is first of all 
a church, not a cemetery, a preaching church of a 
great revivalist order, the Franciscans ; a church 
made beautiful with Franciscan works of art by 
mighty painters and cunning sculptors; a whole 
with a meaning to it ; only incidentally is it the 
pantheon of great dead Florentines. If you want to 



More About Florence 217 

derive the greatest instruction and at the same time 
the greatest amount of pleasure from Florence, you 
must visit all its contents in this historical spirit. 

Just as distinctly as Santa Croce is Franciscan, 
Santa Maria Novella is Dominican. This is true 
of the church as a whole, but still more distinctly 
true of the so-called Spanish Chapel^ or Chapel of 
the Corpus Christi, a little oratory in the cloisters, 
which is a complete epitome of Dominican the- 
ology. The Dominicans were instituted as guar- 
dians of the faith and protectors of the people 
against heresy ; and they were the leading teachers 
of the scholastic philosophy. Hence, on the walls of 
the Spanish Chapel, we see, in the frescoes by 
Taddeo Gaddi and the Sienese masters, a com- 
pendium of that philosophy in a pictorial form. 
I will not explain it all here ; I will merely say 
that unless you take these frescoes in connection 
with their allegorical meaning, and in connection 
with the feast of Corpus Christi, then recently in- 
stituted, — unless you mentally compare them with 
the objects and ideas of the early Dominicans, they 
can afford you comparatively little pleasure. A 
building like the Spanish Chapel is not a picture 
gallery : it is essentially a consistent whole ; not 
an element in it which does not conduce to the 
general lesson. 



2i 8 The European Tour 

I will say a few words, however, just by way of 
illustration, about another chapel in the main body 
of this church, because it well exemplifies the 
point I made above about the relation of private 
oratories in churches to the families who owned 
them. There are in Santa Maria Novella two 
chapels of the Strozzi family. One, the most 
famous, contains some magnificent Dominican 
frescoes by Andrea Orcagna, together with an 
altar-piece in which Christ gives the keys on one 
hand to St. Peter, and the book on the other hand 
to the great Dominican saint and philosophical 
teacher, Thomas Aquinas, who is thus placed 
almost on a level with the papacy. The allegori- 
cal meaning of this altar-piece is still further accen- 
tuated by the presence of the Madonna and St. 
John Baptist, patrons of this particular church and 
city. The glory of St. Thomas Aquinas is the 
central idea of the whole oratory. But it is not 
this more famous Strozzi Chapel, with its glorious 
picture of Paradise — a dream of beauty — to 
which I would refer at present ; I want rather to 
lay stress on the other and newer one which has 
been less written about, and which visitors there- 
fore less often examine closely. And here is a 
brief account of its claim to consideration. 

It was formerly, as a Latin inscription upon it 



More About Florence 219 

relates, dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, but 
was afterwards bought by Filippo Strozzi, founder 
of the magnificent Strozzi Palace, and made over 
by him to his personal patrons, St. Philip and St. 
James, ever indivisible. He employed another 
Philip, the great Renaissance painter, Filippino 
Lippi, to decorate the walls for him with frescoes 
which now rank as some of their painter's finest 
work. On the right wall Filippino accordingly 
painted a set of subjects from the legendary life 
of St. Philip, his own name-saint as well as his 
employer's, and the new patron to whom the 
chapel was now dedicated. But on the left wall, 
as if in compliment to the dispossessed St. John, 
or as compensation for disturbance, he painted a 
similar series from the life of the Fourth Evan- 
gelist. I have described their subjects in full in 
my Guide to Florence, and I will not repeat the 
description here, because what I want to do now 
is not to dwell upon them but merely to point out 
the historical allusiveness of such a family chapel. 
The end wall, between these two sets of frescoes, 
contains a stained-glass window, after a design by 
Filippino, and its subject is Our Lady, the patroness 
of the church as a whole, throned between St. 
Philip and St. James, patrons of the Strozzi and of 
this particular chapel. Beneath it, as if protected 



220 The European Tour 

by his chosen guardians, lies the tomb of Filippo 
Strozzi himself, the originator of the design, — a 
noble work of plastic art by Benedetto da Maiano, 
who was the family sculptor and architect, and who 
also planned the Strozzi Palace. The bust of 
Filippo Strozzi by this same Benedetto, which 
once adorned this tomb, is now in the Louvre ; 
but oh, what a difference between seeing it 
there in meaningless isolation, and seeing it here 
among the domestic associations for which it was 
originally intended ! If you conscientiously visit 
one such chapel as this, and understand its mean- 
ing, you will never again be content to treat a 
church as if it were a scratch collection of un- 
connected pictures and unrelated monuments. In 
a picture gallery a portrait of a courtesan jostles 
a Madonna by Raphael ; but in a church each 
work fills its proper place in a harmonious 
composition. 

I have only touched lightly upon a few of the 
less celebrated objects in Santa Maria Novella, 
because I am not here trying to describe but merely 
to set you on the right road for understanding. I 
have left unmentioned its most famous gems. 
Indeed, if I were to describe in full all that Santa 
Maria contains, I should have to write a great 
many big volumes. 



More About Florence 22 1 

These two churches, Santa Croce and Santa 
Maria Novella, are invaluable as museums of the 
early Giottesque fresco-painters ; they show us the 
roots and mainsprings of Italian painting. They 
are also admirable object-lessons in the great re- 
ligious outburst of the early Franciscan and Domin- 
ican revival. After seeing them, a visitor ought 
to see the Cathedral and its adjuncts. But these I 
will not even attempt to describe. I will merely 
say that to a northern or western visitor, for whom 
art means pictures, the bronze doors of the Bap- 
tistery alone will be a marvellous revelation. It 
sounds like extravagance to say so — until you 
have seen them ; but those doors by themselves 
require many weeks of study. I do not mean 
merely the famous eastern doors, by Ghiberti, 
which occupied their sculptor for twenty-seven 
years — think of it, O hurried American ! — and 
which Michael Angelo declared fit to be the gates 
of Paradise. Those indeed are beautiful, con- 
summate, inexpressible, perfect ; but they are not 
the only ones. And here let me give you one 
word of sound advice. Do net fall into the 
common error of thinking you ought to look only 
at " the very best work," and neglect the less 
admirable, — especially not where all is admirable in 
its way. That is the wrong way to understand the 



222 The European Tour 

best. The most perfect can only be appreciated by 
comparison with the almost perfect or rather perfect 
which preceded it. There are three sets of these 
gates, and between them they mark the progress 
of the art of sculpture in Tuscany. Andrea 
Pisano's are the earliest and simplest, but they are 
very lovely ; in some ways the loveliest. Then 
come Ghiberti's first set, in a style intermediate 
between Andrea's and his later manner. Last of 
all come the pair which alone you will see most 
visitors stand and stare at, as if the less famous 
ones were unworthy their serious attention. This 
is a fatal blunder. When you see a man posing 
awestruck before these eastern gates alone, you 
may be sure he is a pretender. You can never 
know much about art of any sort if you confine 
yourself always to the most celebrated master- 
pieces. 

In the Opera del Duomo, again, you will learn 
once more the infinite variety of Tuscan art- 
handicraft. Many visitors only look at Luca 
della Robbia's Singing Boys ; and indeed, one can 
hardly blame them, for lovelier sculpture man 
never invented. But there are other objects here 
a little less famous, yet unspeakably beautiful, such 
as the silver shrine or High Altar from the Bap- 
tistery, representing the life of St. John Baptist, in 



More About Florence 223 

a series of reliefs of different dates, by many famous 
artists. And these are not all. The mosaics, the 
enamels, the Byzantine needlework — But I must 
draw a line. I can only say in conclusion, here in 
Florence you will begin to understand what I said 
before, that in Italy art is an all-pervading presence. 

One other great sight of Florence demands a 
word in passing, because it also is liable to the 
gravest misconceptions. I believe most English 
and American tourists go to see the Monastery of 
San Marco because it is Savonarola's home, and 
because they have read " Romola." I cannot read 
" Romola " — I have tried, and failed — but I can 
tell you of another and better way of seeing San 
Marco. Recollect that it is, first of all, a Do- 
minican house, erected by the earliest and greatest 
of the Medici for the monks of St. Dominic, and 
decorated throughout with Dominican pictures by 
the saintly Dominican painter, Fra Angelico. I 
am not going to speak here about the exquisite 
tenderness, sanctity, and mysticism of that ecstatic 
and poetic friar. You will see his works and 
understand all that on mere inspection. But I 
want to say a word or two, rather, about the 
meaning of his pictures, and their close connection 
with the places they occupy. 

I will take five only, the five which first strike 



224 The European Tour 

your eye as you enter the quiet and solemn little 
courtyard. They are the Dominican cycle. The 
first is commonly described as a Crucifixion. But 
it is not ; it is St. Dominic embracing the foot of 
the Cross, and it typifies here the Devotion of the 
Dominican Order. The next, over the door of the 
Sacristy, represents St. Peter Martyr, the great 
Dominican witness to Catholic truth, with his 
wounded head and palm of martyrdom ; he places 
his finger to his lips, to enforce the Dominican 
rule of silence. This fresco therefore typifies the 
Sanctity of the Dominican Order. Next, over the 
door of the Chapter-House, we see St. Dominic 
once more, but this time with his red star, his open 
book as teacher, and his scourge of rods : he 
typifies the Discipline of the Dominican Order, 
Over the door of the Foresteria, again — the 
quarter reserved for the reception of strangers and 
pilgrims, we get the famous and exquisite fresco — 
unsurpassed in the world for tenderness and 
beauty — of two Dominican friars welcoming 
Christ in the garb of a pilgrim — " Inasmuch as 
ye have done it unto the least of these little ones, 
ye have done it unto me." This picture of course 
typifies the Hospitality of the Dominican Order. 
Finally, we have, over another door, St. Thomas 
Aquinas with his open book; he was the great 



More About Florence 225 

Dominican teacher and philosopher, and he typifies 
the Learning of the Dominican Order. 

At Santa Maria Novella you will already have 
seen much of St. Thomas Aquinas and his glory; 
and by the time you have honestly gone through 
San Marco, the black-and-white Dominican robes 
will be quite familiar to you, and so will be the 
faces and features of their most distinguished 
wearers, 

As yet, you will notice, I have said nothing 
about the picture galleries. And as a general rule, 
everywhere, I would advise you to familiarise 
yourself first with the town, the architecture, and 
the churches, as well as with the local saints and 
local history, before you begin to attack the gal- 
leries. Their meaning will thus become much 
more apparent to you. For example, here in 
Florence, the Baptistery, which is the old cathe- 
dral, shows you why St. John is the patron of 
Florence ; the works of art in it familiarise you 
with many Florentine allusions, and especially with 
the little St. John Baptist setting out for the desert, 
a figure which afterwards becomes symbolical to 
you of the town itself. Santa Reparata, San Za- 
nobi, Sant' Antonino, and many other local saints 
will thus have become old acquaintances before 
you visit the picture galleries, where you will find 
15 



226 The European Tour 

them divorced from their original surroundings. 
For example, at San Marco, you will see the cell 
occupied by Cosimo de' Medici, Pater Patriae, 
when he went into occasional retreats. On the 
wall of this cell is a fresco by Fra Angelico repre- 
senting the Crucifixion, with Cosimo's own patron 
saint, St. Cosmo, together with St. John and St. 
Peter Martyr, the last a Dominican ; and these 
two are the patrons of his sons, Giovanni and 
Piero de' Medici. Cosimo could thus pay his de- 
votions to his Lord, before the figures of his own 
patron and those of his sons. In Cosimo's own 
sleeping cell, behind, is an Adoration of the Magi, 
here of course symbolical of worldly rank and 
wealth submitting to the spiritual authority, and 
therefore most appropriate for the retreat of a man 
in power. But if these pictures were removed to 
a picture gallery, their special meaning and allusive- 
ness would be largely lost. As far as possible, in 
my Guides, I try accordingly to show the origin 
of such pictures in galleries, wherever it throws 
light upon the grouping of the personages. For 
instance, in Venice, St. Cosmo and St. Damian 
stand merely as the patron saints of the medical 
profession, and therefore occur mainly in votive 
plague-pictures, side by side with the recognised 
plague-saints, St. Sebastian and St. Roch. But in 



More About Florence 227 

Florence these two holy doctors stand usually as 
patrons of the Medici family (originally physicians; 
their coat of arms consists of gilded pills) ; and 
wherever you find Cosmo and Damian in a Floren- 
tine picture, you may suspect it was painted for 
one of the ruling Medici. Often the St. John 
Baptist of Florence stands by their side, and some- 
times also St. Lawrence, the patron saint of Lo- 
renzo the Magnificent. 

If you bear these things in mind, and have 
already seen the chief churches, you will be in a 
fit position to visit the picture galleries. 

There are many of these in Florence, but three 
stand out with special importance, — the Belle Artt y 
the Uffizi, and the Pitti Palace. I advise you to 
visit them in this order. 

Of course I am not going to give you here a re- 
sume of what I have written in my Guide on these 
three great collections. Space makes that impos- 
sible. But that you may form some idea beforehand 
of the sort of treatment I adopt and advise you to 
follow, and that you may judge whether or not it 
will meet your requirements, I will transcribe here 
a few consecutive pages out of the various 
descriptions. 

My first extract is from the account of the 
Perugino Room at the Belle Arti : — 



228 The European Tour 

"To the r of the doorway is **57, a very noble 
Perugino, representing the Assumption of the Virgin, in a 
mandorla, surrounded by a group of cherubs in the same 
shape. Her attitude, features, and expression of ecstatic 
adoration, as well as the somewhat affected pose of her 
neck and hands, are all extremely characteristic of Peru- 
gino. So are the surrounding groups of standing and fly- 
ing angels ; the angel immediately to the spectator's l 
of the Madonna has also the characteristic poise of the 
head. Above is the Eternal Father, in a circle, with 
adoring angels. Below stand four Vallombrosan saints, 
as spectators of the mystery : (the picture comes from the 
great suppressed monastery of Vallombrosa. ) You will 
grow familiar with this group in many other parts of the 
gallery, as most of the pictures were brought here at the 
suppression. The saints are, San Bernardo degli Uberti 
(in cardinal's robes) : San Giovanni Gualberto (the 
founder) : St. Benedict (in brown) : and the Arch- 
angel Michael. Note their features. The figure of St. 
Michael, in particular, may be well compared with the 
other exquisite St. Michael, also by Perugino, from the great 
altar-piece in the Certosa di Pavia, now in the National 
Gallery in London. This Assumption is one of Perugino' s 
finest and most characteristic works. It deserves long and 
attentive study. Such compositions, with a heavenly and 
earthly scene combined, are great favourites with Umbrian 
painters. (See them at Perugia, and in Raphael's Disputa 
in the Vatican.) Do not fail to notice the beautiful land- 
scape background of the country about Perugia. Study 
this work as a model of Perugino at his best. 



More About Florence 229 

" L wall, 56, * Perugino, the Descent from the 
Cross, a beautiful composition. The scene takes place 
in characteristic Renaissance architecture. The anatomy 
and painting of the dead nude are worthy of notice. 
Observe the way in which the Madonna's face and head 
stand out against the arch in the background, as well as 
the somewhat affected pietism of all the actors, r, the 
Magdalen and Joseph of Arimathea ; l, St. John and 
Nicodemus. Notice their types. 

"Beyond the door, 53, Perugino, the Agony in the 
Garden. The attitudes of the Saviour and the three 
sleeping apostles are traditional. Look out for them else- 
where. The groups of soldiers in the background are 
highly redolent of Perugino' s manner. So is the charm- 
ing landscape. Compare this angel with those in the 
Vallombrosan picture first noted in this room. Observe 
Perugino' s quaint taste in head-dresses. Also, throughout, 
here and in the Assumption, the Umbrian isolation and 
abstractness of his figures. 

" Above, on this wall, *55, Fra Filippo Lippi, a very 
characteristic Madonna and Child enthroned. The 
Medici saints, Cosmo and Damian, in their red robes, 
and two holy Franciscans, St. Francis and St. Antony of 
Padua, stand by. The faces and dresses of the Medici 
saints are typical. The Madonna belongs to the human 
and somewhat round-faced type introduced into Tuscan art 
by Filippo Lippi. Note, in the arcaded niches at the back, 
a faint reminiscence of the older method of painting the 
saints in separate compartments. This is a lovely picture ; 
do not hurry away from it. It comes, you might guess, 



230 The European Tour 

from a Franciscan monastery — namely, Santa Croce. 
I took you first to that church and Santa Maria in order 
that such facts might be the more significant to you. 

" 54, Fra Filippo Lippi, St. Jerome in the desert, with 
his lion in the background, and his cardinal's hat and cru- 
cifix. The impossible rocks smack of the period. This 
is a traditional subject which you will often meet with. 
Don't overlook the books and pen which constantly mark 
the translator of the Vulgate. 

"52, Cosimo Rosselli, St. Barbara. A curious but 
characteristic example of this harsh though very power- 
ful painter. In the centre stands St. Barbara herself, 
with her tower and palm of martyrdom, as if just rising 
from the throne on which she had been sitting. Beneath 
her feet is a fallen armed figure, sometimes interpreted as 
her father, sometimes as the heathen proconsul, Marcian, 
who ordered her execution. The picture, however, as 
the Latin elegiac beneath it relates, was painted for the 
German Guild of Florence. Now, St. Barbara was the 
patroness of artillery (the beautiful Palma Vecchio of St. 
Barbara at Venice was painted for the Venetian Guild of 
Bombardiers) : I take the figure on whom she tramples, 
therefore, though undoubtedly an emperor in arms, to be 
mainly symbolical of the fallen enemy. In short, the 
picture is a Triumph of Artillery. To the l stands the 
St. John of Florence : to the r, St. Mathias the Apostle, 
with his sword of martyrdom. Two charming angels 
draw aside the curtains : a frequent feature. Study this 
as a typical example of Cosimo Rosselli. It comes from 
the Florentine Church of the Annunziata." 



More About Florence 231 

You will notice here how often the origin of 
the picture casts a flood of light upon its grouping 
and meaning. 

My second extract is from the account of the 
Hall of Lorenzo Monaco in the Uffizi, where 
some of the loveliest treasures of Tuscan art are 
preserved : — - 

"This room contains some of the finest and most in- 
teresting works of the Early Florentine period. L of 
the door, as you enter, *i 3 10, Gentile da Fabriano : four 
isolated saints, portions of an altar-piece, with the Ma- 
donna (who once was there) omitted. L, St. Mary 
Magdalen, with her alabaster box of ointment. Next to 
her, St. Nicolas of Bari, with his golden balls : on his 
robes are embroidered the Nativity, the Adoration of the 
Magi, the Flight into Egypt, the Massacre of the Inno- 
cents, the Presentation in the Temple, and the Baptism 
of Christ. Note such subjects hereafter, embroidered on 
the robes of other bishops. They often throw light on 
the personages represented. Then, St. John Baptist of 
Florence, as the ascetic saint, and St. George, with the 
red cross on his lance and shield, a striking figure. In 
the cuspidi above, other saints and angels. This picture 
comes from the church of St. Nicolas in Florence, and 
the Nicolas stood on the r hand of Our Lady. 

"1302, beneath, Benozzi Gozzoli, Predella : (1) 
Marriage of St. Catherine of Alexandria, a charming 
girlish figure : (2) Pieta with St. John and the Magda- 
len : (3) St. Antony with his crutch and book, and 



232 The European Tour 

St. Benedict holding a book and arrow. From Santa 
Croce. 

"End wall, ** I 3°9> Don Lorenzo Monaco. Great 
altar-piece of the Coronation of the Virgin, in a magnifi- 
cent tabernacle of three arches. Adequately to describe 
this noble picture, the only important work now remain- 
ing by Fra Angelico's master, would require many pages. 
I note a few points. Below, the circles of heaven, with 
stars and angels. Centre, once a reliquary, now gone, 
about which angels swing censers. 

*< In the group of saints under the l arch ; nearest the 
throne, St. John Baptist of Florence ; then, St. Peter 
(keys), and St. Benedict, scourge, (this being a Camal- 
dolese-Benedictine picture, painted for Don Lorenzo's 
own monastery of the Angeli at Florence : ) above him, 
St. Stephen, with the stones on his head ; beside whom 
stands St. Paul, holding his sword and his Epistle to the 
Romans; then, St. James the Greater (with ^a staff"), 
St. Antony Abbot (crutch) and other saints less discerni- 
ble, among whom I believe I detect St. Louis of France, 
and St. Louis of Toulouse. In the opposite arch : on the 
extreme r, (to balance St. Benedict) in white robes, St. 
Romuald, founder of the Camaldolese order (a branch of 
the Benedictines ) : next him, St. Andrew and St. John 
the Evangelist ; behind the last, St. Lawrence, with his 
gridiron, (Lorenzo's name saint;) St. Bartholomew 
with his knife ; and St. Francis with his Franciscan robes 
and crucifix. Between the last two, a bishop, probably 
San Zanobi, as his mitre bears the Florentine lily. Be- 
tween him and St. Francis is, I think, St. Vincent. The 



More About Florence 233 

rest I cannot decipher. Observe the numerous angels, 
representing the monastery. In the cuspidi, an Annun- 
ciation, and Christ blessing. Many of the figures on the 
frame may also be identified. L, King David, Noah 
with the ark, and other Old Testament characters. R, 
Daniel, Moses with the stone tables, and various proph- 
ets. The predella contains Bible scenes, and Stories 
from the Life of St. Benedict. ( I ) His death, where 
his disciple St. Maurus sees his soul ascending to heaven : 
(2) his teaching in his monastery, with St. Maurus and 
the young monk who was tempted by the devil. (See 
the same subject in the very different St. Benedict series 
by Francesco di Giorgio Martini in the Scuola Toscana, 
3 za Sala.) (3) Nativity and (4) Adoration of the Magi : 
(5) St. Benedict in his cell with Benedictine saints, male 
and female : he sends out St. Maurus to rescue St. Placi- 
dus from drowning: (6) resuscitation of a novice, killed 
by a falling house at the Convent of Monte-Cassino. 
(The same scenes occur, with others, in Spinello 
Aretino's frescoes in the Sacristy at San Miniato.) 
Taking it all round, a noble work for its date, worth 
close study. 

" 1305. *Domenico Veneziano, Madonna and Child, 
enthroned, under a very peculiar canopy, with St. John 
Baptist, St. Francis (Bernard ?) , San Zanobi, and St. 
Lucy. (It was painted for the church of St. Lucy at 
Florence.) A hard picture, in very peculiar colouring, 
but with fine drawing and good characterisation. It 
is, in point of fact, an early attempt at oil-painting, the 
secret of which Domenico had learnt, and which he im- 



234 The European Tour 

parted to Andrea del Castagno, who murdered him in 
order that he alone might possess it. The colouring is 
clear and bright, but lacks harmony : it is anything but 
melting. The drawing and composition remind one of 
Andrea del Castagno. 

" 24. Lorenzo di Credi. Virgin adoring the Child. 
The infant exquisite. 

"1286. ** Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi. One 
of the painter's finest sacred works, where all the con- 
ventional elements are retained, while a totally new 
meaning is given to the merest detail, such as the great 
ruined classical temple, and far more to the group of 
attendants on the Three Kings, all of whom are contem- 
porary Florentine portraits. Notice in the figure of the 
Young King, to the r, in white, (a portrait of Lorenzo 
de' Medici,) how completely Botticelli has transformed 
and spiritualised the earlier conception. The portrait 
faces of all the Three Kings, indeed, are exquisitely 
beautiful : the eldest, seen in profile, is Cosimo Pater 
Patriae. Equally fine is the group of men of letters 
and statesmen to the r. Do not overlook the poetical 
Botticellian touch in the light gauze veil thrown over 
the Second King's gift, nor the fur on his dress, nor 
the dainty painting of the peacock on the ruin, nor the 
thoughtful face of the draped figure in yellow, to 
the extreme r, nor the haughty aristocratic mouths of 
the Medici to the l, nor indeed anything about this 
wonderful picture. Every face is significant, every fold 
of the drapery is beautiful and flowing. (From Santa 
Maria Novella.)" 



More About Florence 235 

I will not make any extract from the part relat- 
ing to the Pitti Palace, which I regard as the least 
interesting of the great Florentine collections, but 
will go on at once to a more congenial subject. 
I mean, the Bargello. 

Nowhere in Italy will you feel the all-pervading- 
ness of Italian art as you feel it at the Bargello. 
The building was the old castle of the Podesta or 
chief magistrate of Florence ; and it is fitted up 
now as a national museum of sculpture and decora- 
tive arts. Till you see it, you can never guess 
what decorative arts are like. I make the follow- 
ing extract from my description, merely as some 
clue to the nature of its contents : — 

"The next room, Sixth Hall, contains bronzes, re- 
liefs, and statues of the early Renaissance. All these 
deserve the closest attention. R of the door, St. John 
Baptist in the Desert, by Michelozzo, an early example 
of the comparative abandonment of the merely ascetic 
ideal. Compare and bear in mind all these various 
Baptists : their importance is fundamental. R of the 
door, fine bas-relief by Bertoldo, of a battle between Ro- 
mans and barbarians, inspired by the antique, and full of 
classical feeling. The Victories and nude figures to 
r and l are especially admirable. Above it, good 
bust of the Duke of Urbino. Beneath, * Reliquary of 
St. Protus and St. Hyacinthus, by Lorenzo Ghiberti ; 
fine flying angels. The case, beyond, contains fine 



236 The European Tour 

imitation antique and Renaissance statuettes. In the 
centre of the room, ** Verrocchio's beautiful bronze 
David with the head of Goliath, one of its sculptor's 
masterpieces. The head foreshadows Leonardo : the 
curls are delicious : the easy assured pose may be com- 
pared or contrasted with the Donatello and the Michael 
Angelo. The thin veined arms, however, (perhaps of 
an apprentice model,) are evidently influenced by the 
ascetic mediaeval ideal : compare the figures in Verroc- 
chio's (painted) Baptism of Christ in the Belle Arti. 
The whole attitude of this David, in spite of its meagre 
limbs, is striking and graceful. This work should be 
looked at in contrast with Donatello on the one hand 
and with Michael Angelo and Benvenuto Cellini on the 
other. 

s€ End wally **two gilt bronze panels, the sacrifice of 
Isaac by * Brunelleschi and ** Ghiberti respectively. 
These were the panels which were sent in by the two 
artists as specimens of their handiwork in the competi- 
tion for the Second Gates of the Baptistery in 1402. 
The superiority of Ghiberti' s design in composition and 
plastic calm is very apparent. At the same time, the 
elements of conventional treatment common to the two 
scenes are worth close comparison. The positions of 
most of the actors and accessories are fairly constant. 
Observe the quiet strength and repose of Ghiberti, con- 
trasted with the bustle and strain of Brunelleschi. One 
is like a sculptor's work, the other like an engineer's. 

"Beneath these, Lorenzo Vecchietta's line* recum- 
bent statue for a tomb, in which a successful attempt is 



More About Florence 237 

made to put greater naturalness into this type of monu- 
ment. Above, good Crucifixion by Bertoldo. 

" Wall to the r, Crucifixion, by Donatello, partly 
gilt. All the attitudes in this admirable scene are 
worth careful notice. Observe at how much earlier a 
date sculpture succeeded in emancipating itself from con- 
ventional trammels than did painting. No contemporary 
picture has the freedom and ease of the Roman soldier 
nailing the feet of the Impenitent Thief; nor of the long- 
haired Magdalen in the foreground to the l ; nor of the 
semi-nude figure with shield beyond it ; nor of St. Lon- 
ginus (distinguished by his halo) with his hand to his 
mouth, just above the last-mentioned figure. Study 
closely this admirable relief. It will well repay you. 

"The Seventh Hall beyond contains the work in 
bronze of the High Renaissance up to the point where it 
verges towards the Decadence. Among so many noble 
works as are contained in this room, it is difficult to make 
a selection : besides, very few of them need explanation. 
Note, however, the Ganymede and the eagle, attributed 
to Benvenuto Cellini, with its admirable ease of poise, 
and its perfect equilibrium. (Compare with similar 
antiques in the Uffizi.) Also the Antoninus Pius, which 
is a successful 15 th century imitation of the antique. 
Look at Daniele da Volterra's * Bust of Michael Angelo ; 
and, close beside it, Sansovino's Christ in Glory. In a 
glass case is Cellini's sketch in bronze for the Perseus of 
the Loggia dei Lanzi, differing slightly in detail from the 
model finally adopted. Beside it, admirably executed but 
not pleasing bust of Cosimo I., a subject to try the greatest 



238 The European Tour 

sculptor. Beyond, again, * wax model of the Perseus, 
differing much more markedly from the form at last 
adopted. Further on, ** Cellini' s original relief for the 
base of the Perseus, the Release of Andromeda, now- 
replaced in the Loggia by a cast : a most beautiful piece 
of consummate metal-work. Close by, fine Venus by 
Giovanni da Bologna. Also, end wall, his Galatea, a 
successful figure. All the small works on this wall should 
be carefully noted. In the centre of the room, Giovanni 
da Bologna's celebrated * Mercury, too often copied, 
perhaps the lightest work in bronze ever executed. Its 
poise is wonderful. It seems to soar naturally. But re- 
productions have vulgarized it. Fine bronze candelabra 
and other works. I omit many fine specimens of sculp- 
ture, such as the copy of the too famous Farnese bull. 
Do not overlook the handsome wooden ceiling. 

<f The stairs to the upper floor are in Room V, with 
the late ivories. Go back to it. 

" The first apartment at which we arrive, Room I, 
has a fine timber roof, and is decorated with several 
original frescoes, those on the end wall, l, being at- 
tributed to the ever-dubious Giottino. That to the l, 
a fragment, probably forms part of a Joachim expelled 
from the Temple (?). To the r, meeting of Joachim 
and Anna at the Golden Gate, — only Joachim and the 
two servants with the rejected offering remaining. Com- 
pare with other frescoes of corresponding scenes, and you 
will be able to judge of these identifications. Centre, 
Madonna and Child, with Florentine saints, greatly 
injured. 



More About Florence 239 

"The Entrance wall has beautiful Delia Robbia 
Madonnas, with crowning hands, angels, and other 
features. Two of these are the favourite subject of the 
Madonna Adoring the Child. The face of the ** central 
one is inexpressibly beautiful. Beyond the door, Ma- 
donna supporting the dead Christ, by Ghirlandajo, a 
fine fresco. Further on, fresco of justice, between two 
suitors, attributed to Rossi. Beyond the window, 
Madonna and draped Child, of the later School of 
Giotto. 

" End wall, more Delia Robbias. Above, by Gio- 
vanni, Christ and the woman of Samaria. Beneath, by 
Andrea and Luca, Madonna and Child. In the earlier 
type (Luca and Andrea), the figures are usually white 
on a blue ground : later works of the same school 
(Giovanni, etc.) such as the Christ and the Woman of 
Samaria above, are in polychrome, and less pleasing. 

" L wall, returning, Christ and the Magdalen in the 
garden, of the later period. Beneath, in the predella, 
St. Francis receiving the stigmata (compare with pic- 
tures), the Resurrection, and the Maries at the Tomb. 
Beyond the window, more Delia Robbias; charming 
little * Annunciation, good Ascension, * Madonna Ador- 
ing the Child (with delicious baby St. John of Florence), 
Nativity, and a lunette of St. Augustin. After seeing 
these Delia Robbias, look out for similar lunettes and 
medallions over the doors or arcades of Florentine houses 
and churches (Ognissanti, Hospital of San Paolo, Inno- 
centi, etc. ) . Beyond the next window, again, Madonna 
Adoring the Child. In this room (with the next) you 



240 The European Tour 

have the best opportunity afforded you of learning to 
admire and love the Delia Robbias, especially Luca." 

Now, I do not for a moment suppose this faint 
attempt to suggest to you beforehand what Florence 
is like, and why you ought to devote so much 
time to it, has been conspicuously successful. 
There is only one way to appreciate Florence, and 
that is by going there. But if I have roused your 
curiosity, if I have made you think about it seriously, 
I have done a great deal ; and I hope I may also 
have given you some useful hints as to the kind of 
way in which you must see and study this queen 
of cities. I am not afraid that if I once get you 
there early you will hurry away. Florence burns 
itself into one's heart and one's brain. The 
difficulty is, when once you have seen it, to live 
elsewhere. You will want to sell all you have, 
and take an apartment for the rest of your life on 
the western Lung, — Lung' Arno. 



CHAPTER XV 

VENICE 

TF you have taken my advice, you will have 
-*- gone direct from Milan to Florence (stopping 
only at Pisa). But I know very well you will not 
take my advice. There are matters in which it is 
impossible for the best-intentioned people to save 
others from themselves ; and this is one of them. 
I feel convinced that, in spite of the excellent 
reasons which exist for seeing Florence first, mere 
convenience of railway travelling, and ease in map- 
ping out a plan of route, will make everybody go 
direct from Milan to Venice, and then on to 
Florence. They will not understand Venice half 
so well by so doing, it is true ; for the grand 
panorama of the historical development of art 
unrolls itself before one's eyes nowhere as at 
Florence. Still, it is no use shutting one's eyes to 
plain facts of human nature ; and as I know by 
experience, in spite of all I say, that you will rush 
blindly upon your fate by seeing Venice first, I 
may as well proceed to give you some idea as to 
what to see on your way thither. 
16 



242 The European Tour 

First, however, I will proceed upon the improb- 
able supposition that you do take my advice ; in 
which case you must make your way from 
Florence to Venice via Bologna and Padua. I 
recommend you not to stop at Bologna on your 
way to Venice ; it will be better for you to see it 
as you return, on your way to Rome. But to 
Padua you ought to give a couple of days at least 5 
though, if you like, a very convenient way of see- 
ing it is not to stop at Padua itself (the hotels are 
hardly faultless), but to run across for two succes- 
sive days by the early morning train from Venice, 
returning in the evening. However that may be, 
it is worth while at least to catch a glimpse of 
Padua, both for the sake of its magnificent church, 
dedicated to its local Franciscan patron, St. 
Antony of Padua (here commonly known simply as 
" il Santo ") but also for its splendid series of 
Giottos in the little chapel of the Madonna dell* 
Arena, which will afford you a better and more 
pleasing idea of Giotto's art than any you could 
derive from the Florentine churches. 

In saying this, I don't want you to suppose I 
have mentioned the only things you need go to 
see at Padua. It is rich in beautiful things, — in 
fact, if it were north of the Alps, it would be far 
more famous than Antwerp or Nuremberg ; but 



Venice 243 

being in Italy, well, of course, it attracts relatively 
little attention. Andrea Mantegna's frescoes in the 
church of the Eremitani ought to occupy you for 
some time ; then there are the ancient Giottesque 
frescoes by the local artists Avanzi and Altichieri, 
(important in the history of North Italian art) 
at the Cappella San Giorgio — deliciously naive 
stories of the lives of St. George, to whom the 
chapel is dedicated, and of his like-minded sister- 
saints, Catherine and Lucy ; as well as the cele- 
brated Titians of the Scuola del Santo. These, 
with the magnificent shrine of Sant' Antonio him- 
self, the reliefs by Donatello, Riccio, and Bellano, 
the great equestrian statue of Gattamelata by Do- 
natello, and the beautiful Palma Vecchio of the 
Scuola del Carmine will take you at least two days 
merely to walk through with the most casual in- 
spection. To tell you the truth, that is why I 
hesitate about sending you to the smaller towns of 
Italy at all. You cannot give them a week or two 
apiece ; and less than a week or two is quite in- 
adequate to see them in. It is absurd to suppose 
you can see Padua as you might see Ghent or 
Winchester or Rouen. 

At the same time, it may strike you that the 
finest works of art at Padua (with the exception 
of the Mantegnas) are by Florentine artists such 



244 The European Tour 

as Giotto and Donatello ; and that will show you 
once more why I have advised you so strenuously 
to go to Florence first^ and stop there longest. 

On the other hand, if you decline to follow my 
advice (as I know you will do), then you will 
probably proceed from Milan to Venice direct ; in 
which case you will probably desire to stop on the 
way for a night (or two) at Verona. Undoubtedly 
Verona is one of the most picturesque of Italian 
cities, and it is full of interest ; but if you see it 
before Florence, it will not do you much good at 
the present stage of your acquaintance with Italian 
art. It is too specialised and too provincial. 
However, as a picturesque town alone, it is well 
worth seeing. Its combination of attractions is 
considerable — nay, almost unique. It has Roman 
remains of importance, — an amphitheatre and a 
fine triumphal arch. It has the most picturesque 
market-place I have ever seen, surrounded by noble 
mediaeval buildings. It has four or five splendid 
churches, one of them, the Romanesque San Zeno, 
full of the profoundest interest. It has the charm- 
ing Tombs of the Scaligers, masterpieces of Gothic 
monumental art. It has many excellent pictures ; 
and a master all of its own, whom you cannot 
study elsewhere, Cavazzola, one of the most touch- 
ing painters of the High Renaissance. Baedeker 



Venice 245 

holds you out hopes that all these sights may be 
seen in a day. I should have said one day was 
insufficient for San Zeno alone, which is full of 
detail of the most interesting description. Give 
Verona at least two whole days, four, if possible ; 
and then remember that you have but begun it. 

Let me warn you in passing to cast Romeo and 
Juliet out of your mind in Verona. Shakespeare 
never was here ; and the object shown to visitors 
as Juliet's tomb is a Roman sarcophagus. Avoid 
such will-o'-the-wisps, such romantic false asso- 
ciations, and confine yourself to the realities, — 
Catullus, Gallienus, Theodoric the Goth, the della 
Scalas, the great Veronese painters, Vittore Pisano, 
Liberale da Verona, the Morones, Girolamo dai 
Libri, Cavazzola, the Bonifazios, Paolo Veronese, 
and so forth. These are surely enough, without 
dragging in mere English poets. 

You will pass Padua on your way from Verona 
to Venice ; but I advise you rather to go over and 
see it from Venice. 

For Venice itself, I will not say very much. 
My task grows easier. Of course, there is noth- 
ing on earth so satisfying as Venice. You cannot 
be disappointed with it. Visitors are often chilled 
by the first view of Florence. The Cathedral, 
the Campanile, the Baptistery fail to come up to 



246 The European Tour 

their high-wrought expectations, — fail just at first, 
that is to say, for the longer you know them the 
more you love them. " Is this all ? " people ask ; 
" this rather plain and unattractive city ? " You 
have to find out Florence by slow degrees ; to let 
her beauty and her wealth of art dawn upon you 
piecemeal, in the Uffizi, in the Belle Arti, in the 
dim aisles of Santa Croce, among the marvellous 
Romanesque carvings of San Miniato. The longer 
you know her, the more you love her, the more 
you see in her. You learn at last that third-rate 
churches, like the Trinita or the Ognissanti, en- 
close works of art which elsewhere would be 
famous. But Venice is not like that. Almost as 
inexhaustible in the end as Florence, she bursts 
upon you from the first moment with a glow of 
romance, of grandeur, of beauty. She takes you 
by storm. Years after, perhaps, Florence lives 
with you as a sweeter memory j but Venice cap- 
tivates you at sight like a proud and queenly 
woman. 

The very arrival at the railway station — else- 
where so prosaic — delights one at once by its 
strangeness and its novelty. You approach Venice 
nowadays, it is true, by the back door, so to speak ; 
she is a maritime city y and the great Doges and 
builders of the period when she held the gorgeous 



Venice 247 

East in fee laid out their town to face seaward — 
to be approached by its glorious front door from 
the Adriatic. The visitor who has the luck to 
reach her so to-day, from Port Said or Alexandria, 
sails up through the navigable channel with the 
domes of St. Mark's and the Salute to guide him ; 
he anchors just in front of the Dogana di Mare; 
and he lands at last on the marble steps of the 
Piazzetta, with the Doge's Palace and the glories 
of the Piazza straight in front of him. He comes 
at once on a blaze of gold and colour. We now- 
adays, on the other hand, creep in at the back from 
landward, as Venice was never intended to be ap- 
proached. We cross the shallow lagoon by a long 
viaduct, and disembark in the poorest and least 
artistically beautiful quarter of the sea-built city. 
Yet even so, it is all Venice. Nothing can detract 
from the delight and romance of that first arrival. 

You quit the station, and go down to your gon- 
dola. You knew about it all before, of course, but 
you did not realise it. You were aware that there 
were and could be no horses in Venice ; but not 
till you reach that landing by the Grand Canal do 
you picture to yourself the life of a great city, all 
carried on entirely by means of boats. You take 
your seat in your gondola, and glide swiftly and 
noiselessly down some side canal, under mysterious 



248 The European Tour 

little bridges, and past mouldering palaces, till you 
arrive at last at your hotel on the Riva or by the 
front of the Salute. It is all one dream ; yet a 
dream come true, the only true dream in this world 
of disappointments. 

Then the Piazza ! You sally forth to see 
Venice, and emerge from a narrow lane upon the 
great square, in its full flood of sunshine. I am 
not going to describe it; words do not describe 
Venice. It is a burst of emotions. I will only 
say that here at last you will exclaim, " They did 
not tell me half ! I expected much ; the reality 
far exceeds my expectation. " 

In this matter I always mentally contrast St. 
Mark's and the Great Pyramid. The first time I 
saw the Pyramids from the Citadel at Cairo, I 
looked across at them and felt, "Yes, there they 
are ! The good old familiar Pyramids of my child- 
hood ! " When I saw them nearer, it was just the 
same; the actuality added no points of detail to 
the mental picture. The Pyramids have no sculp- 
ture, no ornament, no decorative adjuncts. But 
St. Mark's ! You have known it from your child- 
hood, you think, with its domes and pinnacles ; 
and yet, when you see it, you learn at once that 
you never knew it at all, so infinite is its detail, so 
varied its attractiveness. Why, the outside of one 



Venice 249 

wall alone gives you work for a week, so full is it 
of decorative designs, so rich in sculpture, in inlaid 
stone, in mosaic. 

St. Mark's alone is endless. No man ever knows 
St. Mark's. Within and without, it is one mass 
of carved figures, of mosaics, of gold and precious 
stones and marble and alabaster. It defies de- 
scription. I will not even try to tell you how to 
see St. Mark's. You cannot see it. I will only 
say this : outside the church is a sort of porch or 
atrium, which itself I have never yet succeeded 
(after many long visits to Venice) in wholly de- 
ciphering. This atrium alone has seven domes, 
and all these domes, with the arches and wall- 
spaces around them, are encrusted internally with 
endless and quaint mosaic pictures. The first 
dome contains the scenes of the Creation ; and 
adequately to examine this one set alone — Byzan- 
tine work of the twelfth century — requires you to 
stand gazing up at the roof till your neck aches. 
I have spent hours and hours in spelling out all the 
subjects in those seven exterior domes, all the 
obscure Greek or early Italian saints on the walls 
and arches of this porch atone, and I am still far 
from having identified every individual subject. 
As to the interior, it is a question of acres. A 
book which should decipher the whole of St. 



250 The European Tour 

Mark's would run to three or four stout and 
closely printed volumes. 

Therefore I do not ask you to stop long enough 
in Venice to see St. Mark's. Human life extends 
on the average to only threescore years and ten — 
which of course are inadequate. I ask you merely 
to remember that in Venice you must make a 
choice of what you will see, and be content with a 
moderate standard of seeing it. Begin with St. 
Mark's, but do not try to " do " it all at once. 
Take it slowly, a bit at a time. Return at fre- 
quent intervals (interposing other things) and add 
a few square yards of mosaic or of sculpture to 
your examined stock on each occasion. Sit often 
in the church, and look about you with an opera- 
glass at what comes nearest. There is only one 
St. Mark's in Europe. See what you see system- 
atically, and choose what interests you most; but 
renounce the impossible task of understanding all 
of it. Above all things, bear in mind that this 
church was built by the Venetians, the greatest 
maritime power in the mediaeval world, and prac- 
tically an outlying fragment of the Byzantine 
Empire in the West for many centuries, in order 
to contain the actual body of the evangelist St. Mark, 
which they carried off from Alexandria, and which 
lies to this day under the High Altar. Unless you 



Venice 251 

appreciate this importance of the body of St. Mark, 
you will never really understand Venice. 

After St. Mark's, and the great group of build- 
ings which surround the Piazza, the most im- 
portant things to see in Venice are the pictures. 
But these again are best understood after you have 
visited the churches, and especially the four great 
plague-churches of different dates, — St. Sebastian, 
San Rocco, San Giobbe, and the Salute. An 
immense deal of Venetian art and religion centres 
round the plague. Trafficking always with the 
plague-stricken East, Venice was specially liable to 
visitations of this scourge, as were all the other 
towns of the Adriatic ; and each visitation brought 
forth a whole crop of new churches, chapels, 
and votive pictures. Nowadays, we should say, 
" Overhaul your main drainage system." In the 
Middle Ages men said, " Build a shrine to the holy 
Job, who was plagued with boils and blains, or 
bring hither the body of San Rocco from Mont- 
pelier." So they sent and stole San Rocco, the 
holy man who had ministered to the plague- 
stricken till he was smitten himself, and built him 
a noble church, and an equally noble charitable 
institution, the Scuola di San Rocco. All these 
plague-churches are full of plague-pictures, a 
sufficient account of which will appear in my 



252 The European Tour 

Historical Guide to Venice, which I hope to 
have ready about the same time as this volume. 

There is a votive work of Titian's, now housed 
in the Salute (the most imposing but by far the 
least interesting of these great plague-churches), 
which will well illustrate the sort of thing at which 
I am here driving. It is older than the building 
in which it now stands. It was painted to com- 
memorate the plague of 15 12 — the same in which 
Giorgione died — and to return thanks to God for 
its cessation. In the centre St. Mark is seated 
on a lofty throne ; and to a mediaeval Venetian St. 
Mark typified Venice, just as to a modern English- 
man the figure of Britannia holding a trident typi- 
fies England. He carries his Gospel in his hands, 
just to let you see that this is an Evangelist. A 
cloud passes over him and casts a shadow upon 
him ; Venice is under a cloud from the pestilence. 
On his right hand stand St. Sebastian with his arrows, 
always symbolical of the plague, and St. Roch 
(San Rocco), whose body the Venetians stole from 
Montpelier; he lifts his robe, as usual, to show a 
plague-spot on his right thigh. These are the two 
great patrons against plague. On the left stand 
St. Cosmo and St. Damian, here not as patrons of 
the Medici, but as the holy physicians. They 
hold in their hands surgical instruments and pots 



Venice 253 

of ointment. Hence the whole meaning of the 
picture is this — Venice preserved from the Plague 
of 15 1 2, by the potent aid of our patron St. Mark, 
assisted by the intercession of our local plague- 
saints, Sebastian and Rocco, the care of the sainted 
leeches, Cosmo and Damian, and the skill and 
devotion of our medical profession. If you look 
in the ordinary guide-books you will find this com- 
plex work described as "St. Mark Enthroned, with 
other Saints. " And much that tells you about it ! 
I advise you, therefore, to begin your tour of 
the Venetian pictures, not with the Academy, where 
they are divorced from their surroundings, but with 
the various churches^ where you see them in their 
true organic connection with the saints or the 
worship for which they were designed. The four 
great plague-churches may come first ; after them 
in due order you might take San Giorgio degli 
Schiavone, where Carpaccio's series from the life 
of St. George, painted for the Dalmatian or 
Slavonian brotherhood who owned the church, will 
put you into the proper frame of mind for appre- 
ciating the similar series of St. Ursula and of the 
Holy Cross at the Academy. When you have 
seen these, and the Redentore, you might proceed 
to attack the great picture gallery itself; and then 
the Doge's Palace (interior). 



254 The European Tour 

For the Academy and the Doges Palace, one great 
point to be borne in mind is the commercial great- 
ness and aristocratic constitution of Venice. A 
great many of the pictures are curious local vari- 
ants or modifications of the type so common else- 
where, in which a votary adores the Madonna and 
Child. But at Venice the votary is usually a Doge 
or other very important oligarch ; and so big does 
he loom in proportion to the subject that we can 
see at last the votive picture is only a means of 
painting the Doge's portrait, and exhibiting him in 
the full dignity of his ducal robes. Indeed, in 
some late pictures this purpose is openly and 
frankly avowed; instead of Our Lady, we find the 
Doge in the presence of an allegorical Venice. If 
you visit Venice after you have seen Florence, the 
sumptuousness and wealth of the Venetian pictures 
will certainly strike you, as well as the matronly 
and aristocratic type of the Blessed Virgin, compared 
with the simple and girlish Florentine Madonnas. 

I am not here writing a Guide to Venice, there- 
fore I will not say much in this place about the 
pictures in the Academy. I hope by this time you 
have sufficiently caught at my general point of view 
to render such detail unnecessary, except in the 
presence of the actual buildings or sculptures or 
mosaics or pictures. I will only add, therefore, 



Venice 255 

that you ought to devote at least a month to Venice; 
and that in that month you can only expect to get 
a very casual glimpse of her inexhaustible riches. 
If you take a month, the greater part should be 
devoted to St. Mark's and the Academy ; though 
you must also see the four great plague-churches, 
San Giorgio, the Frari, and San Giovanni e Paolo. 
Unless your time is very free, and your leisure un- 
bounded, I would strongly dissuade you from visit- 
ing any of the lesser sights, such as the Arsenal, 
the galleries of the private palaces, the interiors of 
the Library, the Mint, and other Government 
buildings, the minor churches, other than those 
specified, and the surrounding towns, such as 
Murano and Chioggia. I do not deny that an 
excursion by steamboat in the afternoon or evening 
to these islands and to the Lido is useful as show- 
ing you the true position of Venice ; but I would 
warn you against trying to see them in the sense 
of visiting their churches and pictures. You have 
no time for these things. Indeed, I hardly know 
how you can manage to look at such almost indis- 
pensable objects as San Salvatore, with its gorgeous 
Titian and Carpaccio, San Giovanni Crisostomo, 
with its exquisite Bellini, and the Madonna dell' 
Orto, with its noble Tintorettos. I fear to advise 
you even to glance at Palma Vecchio's St. Barbara 



256 The European Tour 

in Santa Maria Formosa, or at the extremely inter- 
esting early Venetian works in San Zaccaria. How 
then can you find time for the adjacent islands ? 

Above all, at Venice more than elsewhere, I 
caution you strongly against the idea that to rush 
about and see things pell-mell all over the place 
can be of any use to you. What you see, see 
thoroughly, and see slowly. Chew it and digest it. 
The habit of bolting spoils foreign travel. It is 
better to spend two days over San Giorgio degli 
Schiavoni than to be able to boast at table d'hote 
in the evening that to-day you crossed the Rialto, 
looked into San Giovanni Elemosinario, — " first- 
rate Titian ! " — did Santa Maria Mater Domini, 
walked through the Correr Museum, saw every- 
thing in the Frari, formed a critical opinion of the 
Scuola di San Rocco, and came home with a 
splitting headache. In a week's time you will 
have forgotten whether the Frari was at Venice or 
Verona, will think that Titian painted Tintoretto's 
Crucifixion, and will believe that the Pesaro 
Madonna is in the Redentore, where Carpaccio 
placed it over the High Altar as a monumental 
offering to his friend, Paolo Veronese. If you 
wish to avoid such nightmares as these, take your 
Venice slowly, and read it up as you go in competent 
authorities. 



CHAPTER XVI 

ROMEWARDS 

T AND is now in sight. I see, not far ahead, 
-*-' the end of my labours. To say the truth, 
when once I had got you safely landed in Florence, 
I felt that my task was almost completed. If you 
have seen Florence, and seen it properly, your 
education has passed the critical stage; you can 
be largely trusted now to choose for yourself where 
to go and what to see. You have eaten of the 
tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

At least, I hope so. And if you have not, well, 
I cannot avail you much. Italy, after all, must be 
its own interpreter. The most the teacher can do 
is to put you on the right track for understanding 
and enjoying it. 

So off we start from Venice Romewards. By 
this time, I hope, you will have learned that every 
town in Italy — as in Europe generally — is not 
merely " the place where you are to see " the 
Amphitheatre or St. Mark's, Giotto's Campanile 
or Raphael's Sposalizio. Each is a whole : each 
17 



258 The European Tour 

has a history, a school of art, an atmosphere of its 
own. It is Lombard or Tuscan, aristocratic or 
despotic; it has its ruling families and its popular 
saints, its associations with Germany or with the 
Byzantine Empire, its architectural traditions, its 
preponderance of marble or mosaic or fresco, its 
favourite religious orders, its enthusiasts, its re- 
formers. After seeing Florence and Venice, with 
perhaps Pisa and Padua thrown in, you ought fairly 
to have grasped this truth ; you ought to see for 
yourself that architecture, painting, sculpture, 
decoration have an organic connection with the 
national life, the city's type and temperament and 
history. The value of works of art is thus vastly 
enhanced, and their intellectual pleasurability almost 
doubled by seeing them in the surroundings which 
originally inspired them. 

It is largely on this account, too, that I have 
tried to dissuade you from wasting too much time 
at first in London and Paris and the German 
cities. To see a picture by Mantegna in the 
Louvre is one thing ; to see it at Mantua or Padua 
or Verona in its original setting, is quite another. 
If you went to Dresden before you went to 
Florence, you would see there Raphael's Madonna 
di San Sisto ; and you would consider Dresden 
mainly as the place where that particular picture is 



Romewards 259 

housed. And in so doing, you would form a false 
impression. Just because Dresden has little 
coherency and congruity of its own — just because 
it is a museum of gathered art — a scratch col- 
lection — I have warned you against going to see it 
till you have seen and learned the ways of other 
European cities which will put you in the right 
road for understanding the inner heart of Europe. 
The less time you can afford to spend in Europe, 
the more necessary is it for you to economise wisely 
by getting to Florence and Venice as early as 
possible. 

So from this point on, my treatment must be 
more rapid. Either I have convinced you of the 
justness of my plan — in which case no more 
words are needed; or else I have not — in which 
case more words will probably fail to impress you. 

You will return to Rome via Ferrara, Bologna, 
and Florence. About stopping at the two first of 
these towns, I leave you now to use your own judg- 
ment. The question of time must settle the matter. 
Grass-grown Ferrara has an interesting school of 
art of its own, which also leads up to the Bolognese 
masters, by action and reaction. A couple of 
nights might give you a rough idea of it. Sleepy 
Bologna, so mediaeval, so modern, so quaintly 
jumbled, is immensely interesting ; it has also a school 



260 The European Tour 

of art of its own, which in its earlier age culminated 
in Francia, and later gave birth to the most annoy- 
ing and mannered of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
century painters, such as the Carracci, Guido, and 
Domenichino, of whose affected and intrinsically 
vulgar works — painted to suit the taste of Popes and 
Cardinals — you will see more than enough in the 
dreary Roman galleries. Nevertheless, three or 
four days ought (if possible) to be devoted to 
Bologna, especially as regards its earliest Christian 
remains, some of which are most interesting. 
Here you may begin to take note of sarcophagi. 
From Bologna, I recommend either a detour of two 
or three days to Ravenna, or else (which is better) 
two or three separate long day excursions. The 
journey is endless, and the days tedious; but still, 
it is pleasanter and safer so than stopping the night 
at Ravenna. No town in Italy is so rich as this 
in early Christian antiquities of the intermediate 
period — churches and mosaics of the later Empire, 
of Theodoric the Goth and his Arian heretics, and 
of Justinian and the Byzantines. It is a museum 
of the decadence. Here alone in Italy one can 
trace in full the long decline of the Roman 
Empire, the history of the fourth, fifth, sixth, 
seventh, and eighth centuries ; here alone one can 
note how the classical spirit merges by degrees into 



Romewards 261 

the barbaric and mediaeval, or rises once more into 
Byzantine formalism. For myself, I would say, try 
to see Ravenna, even if you have thereby to forego 
Naples. You will find it far more instructive and 
infinitely more amusing. It is one of the ugliest 
yet one of the most surpassingly and entrancingly 
interesting cities in Europe. 

From Ravenna and Bologna, return to Florence. 
It would not be a bad plan, if you can manage it, 
to spend two or three days more now in Florence, 
before starting for Rome, in order to see again 
certain objects by the light cast on them from the 
reflections of Venice. Compare, compare, com- 
pare ! That is the whole gospel of the study of 
art. You will find every day things that you saw 
before take new meanings from what you have 
learnt later. 

Then, on to Rome. On your way you can take 
Orvieto, without diverging from the main route ; or, 
by a slight detour, Siena, or else Perugia. Of the 
three, Siena is the most important, Perugia the 
least so. But if time permits, try to see all three ; 
they are infinitely more valuable and delightful than 
Munich or Dresden. I will not now insist on the 
sort of thing you should see in each, or the way 
you should see it. Siena is a town of the highest 
artistic rank, with a school of its own which dates 



262 The European Tour 

back very far, and which largely influenced the 
school of Florence. It has also a cathedral which, 
internally at least, is the most satisfying in Italy — 
as a Gothic building, for St. Mark's stands apart 
without peer or second. Besides, nothing in Italy 
is quite so typically and mediaevally Italian as 
Siena ; it seems to have stood still since the days 
of Pinturicchio ; as I walk along the streets, I 
always think to myself with a little start of ever- 
recurrent yet fresh surprise, " To me, this is a 
.wonderful relic of the Middle Ages — but these 
people live here! To them this is just the nine- 
teenth century. " The Pinturicchios in the 
cathedral library alone are worth all London. 
Orvieto has an astounding cathedral, almost as 
noble as Siena, and externally superior. But you 
cannot see everything. Perugia does not boast any 
one building so fine as these, but its attractions are 
manifold, and it is indispensable for a comprehen- 
sion of Umbrian art in every direction. It has 
also, in the Tombs of the Volumnii, the most acces- 
sible remains of the ancient Etruscans. Assist 
can be easily combined in the same tour with 
Perugia. 

As for Rome itself I shall not attempt here to 
give you more than the most generalised outline. 
There are too many Romes ; you must choose for 



Romewards 263 

yourself which one amongst them specially interests 
you. 

Unless you are a classical scholar and antiquary, 
I do not advise you to give much time to the ruins 
of Ancient Rome ; and if you are a classical scholar 
and antiquary, you will know for yourself what to 
look at, or will have recourse to good books of 
reference on the subject, such as Burn's Rome and 
the Campagna, Middleton's Ancient Rome, Lanciani, 
etc. All I shall do here will be to suggest to the 
ordinary tourist what things at Rome he ought to 
see, and what he may safely neglect as unimportant. 

A few buildings of Ancient Rome still survive in a 
form which renders it worth while to visit them. 
Such are the Flavian Amphitheatre, commonly 
called the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Arch of Con- 
stantine, the Column of Trajan, the Column of Marcus 
Aurelius, and the little round temple of Hercules 
Victor or of the Mater Matuta, commonly called 
the Temple of Vesta. I should advise you to 
begin your Rome chronologically, in a rough way, 
by visiting these first; for I am not writing for 
people who want to see the Wall of Servius Tul- 
lius or the Cloaca Maxima. These things are for 
specialists ; when you are in London, you will not 
enquire into the Outfall of the Metropolitan Sewers 
at Barking ; and I do not see why, when you are at 



264 The European Tour 

Rome, you should enquire into the Main Drainage 
of the ancient republic. My counsel is, therefore, 
see first those larger buildings of Ancient Rome 
which still stand tolerably intact, and which will 
give you an idea of the position, extent, and gran- 
deur of the antique city. In order to get this idea 
fleshed out in full, however, you must also spend a 
little time in exploring the waste district to the 
southeast of the existing city, since Modern Rome 
has spread northward and westward of the old 
populated area. Stroll out here often, and look for 
yourself at the hills of the earlier population. 

For the more ruinous portions of the old town, 
I have a very moderate regard. They consist 
largely of uninteresting ground plans. Of course, 
if you are saturated with the literature of ancient 
Rome, — if you know your Horace, your Martial, 
your Juvenal by heart, — you will find a pleasure 
of association in all these spots ; and if it really 
delights you to recognise under modern aliases the 
Gardens of Sallust and the Fountain of Egeria and 
the Arch of the Money-changers, I would not deny 
you that pleasure of identification : all I mean is, 
don't let your guide-book persuade you (an Ameri- 
can young lady, let us say, with no first-hand 
knowledge of the Epodes or the Third Satire) that 
you must pump up a false enthusiasm for the 



Romewards 265 

Porta Capena or go wild with joy over the Portico 
of Octavia. Confine yourself for the most part to 
those objects in Ancient Rome which you can 
really understand, and whose artistic importance 
gives them a living value to you. It is better to 
spend doubtful hours in the galleries of the Vatican 
than to waste them on poking out potsherds on the 
Monte Testaccio. 

As a good example of what you need not see to 
any great extent, I would venture to mention the 
Palatine Hill. This most famous and most ancient 
of the Roman heights is a mere shapeless mass of 
ruined brick-work. I do not mean, of course, that 
you are not to visit it at all ; far be it from me to 
say so : the Palatine was the oldest Rome of all, 
the primitive hill-fortress of the real or mythical 
Romulus, the antique Roma ^uadrata or Square 
Rome, portions of whose very early wall of cir- 
cumvallation have been brought to light in various 
places ; and it remained to the end the centre and 
most important site of Imperial Rome, with the 
Palace of the Caesars crowning its crest and oc- 
cupying the site of the immemorial home of the 
Seven Kings. Therefore I would say to you, go 
early in your visit for a stroll on the Palatine^ and 
try to understand from it its relation to the Capitol, 
the Forum, the Aventine, the Esquiline, and the 



2,66 The European Tour 

other chief heights or depressions or plains of 
Ancient Rome. Use it topographically as your 
centre and standard of reference j orient yourself 
by means of it ; recollect always when you are 
dealing with Ancient Rome that the Palatine is its 
focus and starting-point, as the Forum is the seat 
of its corporate life. But do not (unless you feel 
a genuine interest in identifying the spots) feel 
constrained to go over it all, guide-book in hand, 
laboriously satisfying yourself as to each English 
or German scholar's reason for asserting or deny- 
ing that this particular mass of broken brick is or 
is not the Auguratorium or the Palace of Severus. 
Neglect detail. Take the Palatine as a whole; 
look at the few objects it contains of artistic 
interest ; examine the mural paintings in the House 
of Livia ; cast a glance at the altar with the figures 
of the Lares ; make the best you can of it : but do 
not, oh, do not imagine you are bound in honour 
to decide questions about which doctors disagree, 
or to inspect at great length every basement room 
in the Palace of Augustus. The Caesars them- 
selves never saw those rooms : the domestic 
arrangements of the imperial slaves may surely 
be left to competent antiquaries. 

If you bear this principle in mind, you will find 
to your relief that you can reduce your investiga- 



Romewards 267 

tion of Ancient Rome within reasonable limits of 
time, which I will not presume to define for you. 
First of all, I would say, orient yourself by the 
Palatine, the Capitol, and a few other points. 
Then visit the great classical buildings mentioned 
above, which are not in ruins. After that, try to 
form a general conception of the Forum Romanum 
and the buildings or bases of buildings which it 
contains, paying most attention to the tolerably 
perfect and artistic remains, like the Arch of Sep- 
tlmius Severus, the Arch of Titus, and the marble 
reliefs near the Column of Phocas. Devote rela- 
tively less time to the more ruinous objects, such 
as the Colonnade of the Twelve Gods, the Temple of 
Vespasian, the Temple of Castor and Pollux, or the 
Rostra; and give very little indeed to such mere 
fragmentary architectural groundplans as the Basil- 
ica fulia, the Temple of Vesta, the Basilica of Con- 
stantine, and the Temple of Concord, which are of 
purely historical and antiquarian importance. If 
you have never read Livy, why should you be 
anxious to settle the exact site of some building 
which Livy mentions in a difficult or doubtful 
passage ? You are not always trying in New York 
to discover where particular events occurred : if 
you are no classic, you need not in Rome either. 
Still less would I advise you (save in the ex- 



268 The European Tour 

ceptional case where a special literary or historical 
interest leads you) to trouble much about the sites 
of the various For a of the Ctesars, now almost over- 
grown and hidden by modern houses. It is mere 
waste of time for you, a six-monthly visitor, to go 
out of your way to hunt up the fragments of the 
Ulpian Basilica, of the Forum of Nerva, of the 
Temple of Minerva, of the Temple of Mars Ultor, 
and so forth through the long catalogue of minor 
ruins. If you happen to come across them in 
your walks, identify them by all mean-s ; but don't 
run about to discover them. Remember, this is 
Rome ; it has ten thousand claims of the first im- 
portance on your time and attention ; and if you 
worry about the 1: /ramid of Cestius or the House 
of Crescentius, you will neglect in the end the 
weightier matters of the law, — the sculpture of the 
Capitol or the mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore. 
Let minor things slide, and stick to essentials. 

In this general condemnation, however, I will 
not include the Baths or Thermae, especially those 
of Caracalla and of Diocletian. The latter con- 
tain the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, and 
also a good Museum of Antiques, WL'ch will begin 
to introduce you to the important subject of ancient 
sculpture. You will have had glimpses of ancient 
plastic art already at Paris and Florence, but it is 



Romewards 269 

at Rome that you will first catch full sight of the 
gods and goddesses. 

And here, if you take my advice, you will set 
out on your investigation by visiting those far more 
important collections of ancient art which above 
all things else make a visit to Rome obligatory. 
Take your subject chronologically, as I have tried 
to make you take other cities. Begin with Ancient 
Rome itself — its hills, its Forum, its temples, its 
palaces, its deserted site, its few existing sculptured 
monuments, such as the Arches of Severus and 
of Constantine. Then go on to the collections of 
statuary and other works of art, the product of 
excavations, now laid up in the Capitoline, the 
Vatican^ and other museums. jee the framework 
or skeleton first ; examine the fragments torn from 
it or rescued from it afterwards. If you will see 
Rome in this way, you will run some chance of 
partially understanding it ; if you insist upon taking 
it up and down, unchronologically, anyhow — on 
visiting it by " districts " — on rushing from the 
Raphaels at the Vatican to the antique sculpture in 
the Capitoline, and then from the Gladiator or the 
Venus to the Guidos, the Byzantinesque mosaics, 
and the mediaeval frescoes, — you will never grasp 
it. Follow a definite plan, and follow it logically. 

At the same time, I am aware that the flesh is 



270 The European Tour 

weak. I do not say you must see all Ancient 
Rome first, all transitional Rome next, then all 
mediaeval Rome, and all the Renaissance. That 
were to ask too much of a latter-day tourist. I 
think it will be sufficient if you see first the 
external framework of Ancient Rome ; after that, 
take a day now and again at the Capitoline Museum 
or in the Sculpture Galleries of the Vatican, inter- 
spersing them with other (alternate) visits to the 
Picture Galleries or to Raphael's frescoes. Begin 
Ancient and Modern Rome separately, but see 
each chronologically. All I ask is that you form 
to yourself first a clear idea of the emplacement and 
main monuments of the ancient town, and then 
keep an eye on the transition to its mediaeval and 
modern representatives. 

It will be best, I believe, to set out on your 
investigation of the classical sculpture with the 
museum in the Baths of Diocletian ; then go on 
to the two Capitoline collections ; and finish off 
with the vast treasures of the Vatican. It will do 
you no harm now, however, while you are at work 
on the Capitol^ to see its other great sights at the 
same time — I do not mean of course in one day 
— Heaven forbid — but in connection with one an- 
other. Only, remember all the time to place each 
part chronologically in its proper niche. Don't 



Romewards 271 

jumble the centuries. The Capitol is a whole, a 
city within a city ; and though it has been entirely 
transformed in modern days, there are advantages 
in examining it alone, stratum by stratum, from 
its earliest republican remains to its equestrian 
statue of Marcus Aurelius, its very ancient Chris- 
tian church of Santa Maria in Ara Cceli, its trans- 
formed palaces by Michael Angelo, and its purely 
recent alterations and additions. Indeed, I incline 
to say, it would be best to take the entire group of 
the Capitoline Hill en bloc, as early as possible after 
mastering the main mass of Ancient Rome. 

Of the Vatican Sculpture Gallery, I need not say 
much. Once I allow you to enter it, the difficulty 
will be to get you out again. For here are col- 
lected in noble and worthy rooms the finest 
masterpieces of plastic art which antiquity has 
bequeathed to us. 

Give many, many days to the various collections 
of antique sculpture. 

And now my difficulties as cicerone thicken. 
For though I am not anticipating my Guide to 
Rome, but merely trying to make you feel the 
vastness and many-sidedness of the Eternal City, 
yet I cannot deny that the task of leading you 
about it is an onerous and responsible one. After 
Pagan Rome we come to Early Christian and Tran- 



272 The European Tour 

sitional Rome, in itself a most fascinating and end- 
less study. Here you ought certainly to begin 
your study with the Catacombs, which form the 
first chapter in the long and curious history of 
Roman Christianity. With the entirely classical 
Christian art of the earliest Catacomb pictures 
you may compare the equally classical sculpture 
of the earliest Christian sarcophagi at the Vatican 
and the Lateran, many of which have been brought 
from these cemeteries. Side by side with the be- 
ginnings of Christian art in the great honeycombed 
underground city, indeed, you ought to examine 
the Christian Museum of the Lateran, a collection 
of reliefs, statues, inscriptions, and mosaics of the 
utmost importance as showing you the origins of 
ideas and designs in much later painting and sculp- 
ture. Do not mix up in your mind the various 
collections in the Lateran, pagan, early Christian, 
and modern, with ignorant indiscriminativeness, 
but visit each in its proper order, for comparison 
with objects of the same type and period. Thus 
only can the priceless riches of the Lateran yield 
their full value up to you. 

At the same time that you are visiting these col- 
lections of early Christian art, I recommend you 
also to examine such other relics of the same age 
as the Baptistery of the Lateran itself, which dates 



Romewards 273 

back to Pope Sixtus III. in the fifth century : as 
well as the Lateran Church, which, though im- 
mensely remodelled, still stands upon the site of 
Constantine's basilica. You should also visit the 
Scala Santa, brought from Pilate's palace at Jeru- 
salem by the Empress Helena; and the mosaics 
copied from the Triclinium of Leo III., repre- 
senting the restoration of the Western Empire by 
Charlemagne. I will not try here to suggest the 
ideally best order for visiting the older churches of 
Rome or the mosaics in the newer ones which 
have survived from older buildings ; I will only 
say in this regard that you may comparatively neg- 
lect dull modern erections like St. Peter's — the 
most disappointing church in Christendom — in 
order to find time for the beautiful fifth-century 
mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore, the similar 
series at San Paolo fuori le Mura, and the quaint 
relics of the sixth century in SS. Cosmo and Da- 
mian. Interesting in quite another way is the 
ancient church of San Clemente, with its super- 
posed buildings of three different ages. The Coe- 
lian Hill, once more, is covered with old churches 
and monasteries of the profoundest interest, often 
lonely and dilapidated, but affording the true clue 
to much that is difficult in the art of later ages. 
Such buildings as these are worth ten gaudy St. 
18 



274 The European Tour 

Peters. It is this that you can get at Rome alone ; 
and I advise you to ferret out a few such strange 
old oratories and frescoes at hap-hazard, instead of 
wasting your time among the seventeenth-century 
inanities of the great private picture galleries, the 
whole of which are not worth the mosaics of 
S. Prassede and of Santa Maria Maggiore. Indeed, 
unless you have abundance of leisure, I would say, 
do not trouble about the Barberini or the Borghese 
collections ; they are of fourth-rate interest. 

For Medieval and Renaissance Rome, you will 
now need no guide. It is the least interesting 
Rome of all ; yet it is the common and familiar 
Rome of the average tourist. Much of it centres 
round St. Peters and the main building of the 
Vatican, where artists of all ages and all Italian 
schools have added their part, often incongruously 
enough, to the general adornment of the home of 
the Papacy. Fra Angelico covered with delicate 
frescoes the walls of the dainty little Cappella Nic- 
colina ; but you can feel at once, as you gaze on 
them, that the saintly friar's heart was not here; 
he could not paint for triple-crowned popes and 
scarlet-robed cardinals as he painted for his sirnple- 
souled ascetics at San Marco. The Sistine Chapel, 
again, is a perfect museum of the art of the fifteenth- 
century Tuscans and Umbrians, — Perugino, Pin- 



Romewards 275 

turicchio, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, Cosimo Rosselli, 
and Luca Signorelli ; but none is at his best : and 
you will see at once that this heterogeneous col- 
lection of dissimilar painters would be quite 
meaningless to you if you had not studied their 
other works first at Florence, Siena, Orvieto, and 
Perugia. That is why you must not go to Rome 
at the beginning : you will find there, not the 
history and evolution of art, but a few stray works 
of a few supreme and disconnected artists. 

Most visitors, I notice, make, furthermore, the 
worst use of Rome by their foolish and sheep-like 
habit of running after what they consider the great 
masterpieces. " We have not time for everything," 
they say ; " let us concentrate ourselves on what 
is most important." So they go to the Vatican, 
and in the Slstine Chapel they see only Michael 
Angelo's ceiling and his Last Judgment ; I have 
even known good folk declare with emphasis that 
they have often spent hours in the Sistine Chapel, 
and that there are no works there except Michael 
Angelo's. If you visit Rome in this spirit, Rome 
will teach you the least that is possible for her. 
Of course, even so, you will learn much — you 
must learn much : it is n't conceivable that a 
man should drive from the Porta del Popolo to 
the Forum and the Colosseum without learning 



276 The European Tour 

much — it is n't conceivable that he should walk 
once through the main chambers of the Vatican 
without coming away impressed and in a sense 
altered. But if you want to learn the most that 
Rome can teach you, you will not confine yourself 
to Michael Angelo's ceiling and Raphael's Stanze ; 
you will see a few parts thoroughly, of great men 
and of almost as great, and not rush about with blind 
zeal after the most famous pictures and the most 
frequently photographed pieces of statuary. In the 
opinion of many competent judges, there are other 
objects in the Sistine Chapel quite as well worth 
looking at as the Last Judgment. 

I am not going to dwell at length upon the 
treasures of the Vatican. You must, of course, go 
there often ; but in my opinion, most visitors to 
Rome give too much of their time to this one 
vast collection, and too little to the Lateran, the 
old churches, and the scattered objects. Too 
much relatively, I mean, of course, for the Vatican, 
if it comes to that, can never be seen. Each of 
Raphael's rooms requires separate study ; so do the 
Loggie ; and then there is the Picture Gallery as 
well, which, though not rich in number of works, 
contains not a few deeply interesting masterpieces. 
Here again, as you wander among the Titians, the 
Bellinis, the Fra Angelicos, the Raphaels, the 



Romewards 277 

Peruginos, the Pinturicchios, you will understand 
at last how little you could understand all these if 
you had unwisely come here before visiting Venice 
and Florence. The two great local capitals in- 
troduce you by orderly degrees to the knowledge 
of art in its local distinctness ; at Rome you get 
only a confused and mingled idea of all schools 
and ages. 

Among the things at the Vatican which you 
cannot afford to miss is the Etruscan collection. 

What more can I say of Rome ? I hardly 
know. Its vastness overwhelms me. It is five 
distinct cities. I will take, as I have done else- 
where, a single building as a specimen — not a 
building, some would say, of the very first order of 
interest — and try to show you, or rather suggest to 
you, how to see it. 

Santa Maria Maggiore, or St. Mary of the 
Snows, the conspicuous church which crowns the 
Esquiline hill, does not look from outside a par- 
ticularly ancient or beautiful building. You might 
take it at first for a mere modern cathedral. That 
is a thing to which you have to get accustomed as best 
you may at Rome ; for the seventeenth and eigh- 
teenth centuries tried their little hardest to destroy 
Roman history and ruthlessly improved almost 
everything in the city into their own image. But 



278 The European Tour 

Santa Maria is nevertheless a very ancient church, 
and it occupies a site of immemorial antiquity. 
There are some eighty St. Marys, I believe, in 
Rome ; but this is the largest, and probably the oldest 
of all. Somewhere about the year 355, shortly after 
Christianity triumphed in the city, the Blessed 
Virgin, then much less revered than afterwards, 
appeared in a dream to Pope Liberius (who died in 
366), and commanded him to erect a church to her 
on the spot where he should find next morning a 
fall of snow. As it was August the 5th, Liberius 
hesitated to believe the vision; but he discovered 
next day that the Patrician John had had a similar 
dream at the same moment. The two, much 
wondering, went together to the summit of the 
Esquiline, and found the snow which Our Lady 
had foretold to them. Thereupon they erected a 
Basilica on the spot, called after the Pope's name 
the Basilica Liberiana, which it still officially 
retains. Of this oldest church, few or no remains 
exist ; but the name of Santa Maria ad Nives 
(St. Mary at the Snow) still recalls the miracle, 
and the 5th of August on which it occurred is still 
the church's chief festival, with those of the 
Nativity and the Assumption. 

In 430, once more, a great Council sat at 
Ephesus, to consider among other things the 



Romewards 279 

position and cult of the Blessed Virgin. About 
this subject a schism or difference of opinion had 
grown up in the church. One party, following 
Nestorius, maintained that in Christ the two 
natures, human and divine, remained separate, and 
that therefore Mary, the mother of the man, was 
not (as believers already began to call her) the 
Theotokos, or Mother of God. The Monophy- 
sites, on the other hand, maintained that in Christ 
the two natures, human and divine, were blended 
in one, and that therefore the Blessed Virgin was 
truly in very deed the Mother of God. The 
Council of Ephesus condemned the Nestorians as 
heretics ; and thenceforth the church sanctioned 
the representation of the Madonna and Child, and 
the title of Mother of God as applied to the 
Virgin. 

In 432, accordingly, just after the settlement of 
this important question, Pope Sixtus III. decided to 
rebuild the Basilica Liberiana in a style more worthy 
of the Madonna's increased importance. He 
therefore erected a new basilica, which he conse- 
crated under the name of Sancta Maria Mater Dei, 
which the Council had just decided to be orthodox. 
Thus Santa Maria Maggiore must be looked upon 
from the beginning as a manifesto, so to speak, of 
triumphant Mariolatry over the heretical Nestorians ; 



28 o The European Tour 

and everything it contains bears witness to this 
day to the greatness of the Blessed Virgin as the 
chosen Theotokos. If you enter the church, you 
will find that the nave of Pope Sixtus's building 
still remains, with its ancient marble columns, and 
forms the finest old basilican interior in the city. 
Not less remarkable are its noble mosaics of the 
fifth century, the finest specimens of classical 
Christian art in Rome, interesting alike from their 
importance in the history of design, and from their 
close connection with the life of Our Lady. 
They represent events in the story of the Madonna, 
such as the Annunciation, the Adoration of the 
Magi, and the infancy of Christ. Fully to under- 
stand these mosaics, however, you ought to read up 
beforehand the excellent account of them in the first 
volume of Kugler's Italian Schools of Painting 
(Layard's edition), and also the scattered notices 
of the Council of Ephesus in Mrs. Jameson's 
admirable Legends of the Madonna. 

In the twelfth century, once more, when the cult 
of the Blessed Virgin began to receive a fresh 
impetus in Western Europe, during the religious 
fervour of the Crusades, the church was remodelled 
in the mediaeval style. On the facade of this 
renovated building, the thirteenth-century artists, 
later on, inserted a set of beautiful mosaics, now re- 



Romewards 281 

moved to the loggia above, from which (till recent 
events) the Pope on the festival of the Assumption 
(August 15) used to pronounce his benediction from 
this church of Our Lady the Mother of God, urbi 
et orbi. These mosaics represent Our Lady at the 
right hand of Christ, accompanied by the chief 
apostles, with John the Baptist ; below are shown the 
visions of Pope Liberius and the Patrician John, 
and their tracing of the site on the newly fallen 
snow. In the apse of the tribune again, are still 
finer thirteenth-century mosaics by Jacopo Turriti, 
including the beautiful and famous Coronation of 
the Virgin which is engraved both in Kugler and 
in Mrs. Jameson. There is nothing lovelier in the 
art of the transitional period. 

Later on, once more, the church underwent still 
further changes. When Gregory XL, yielding 
to the solicitations of St. Catherine of Siena, 
succeeded in bringing back the Papacy from its 
" seventy years of Babylonish captivity " at 
Avignon to Rome, he built (or rather heightened), 
in gratitude to Our Lady for his restoration to the 
seat of St. Peter, the great western campanile of 
Sancta Maria Maggiore, now the highest tower in 
the city. In the fifteenth century, again, the build- 
ing was deprived of its mediaeval picturesqueness, and 
reduced to Renaissance straightness and uniformity. 



282 The European Tour 

Of the two large dome-covered side-chapels, the 
Sixtine was added by Pope Sixtus V. in 1586, and 
the Borghese opposite it by Pope Paul V. in 161 1. 
The last-named oratory is covered throughout with 
frescoes of the decadence, uninteresting indeed as 
works of art, but containing a singular and doctri- 
nally valuable Glorification of the Blessed Virgin, 
and of all those saints who have specially furthered 
her honour — such as St. John of Damascus and 
St. Ildefonso miraculously rewarded for writing in 
defence of her cult — as well as representations of 
the discomfiture of heretics or schismatics who 
opposed her glory — the miserable deaths of Julian 
the Apostate, of Leo IV., who destroyed her images, 
and of Constantine IV., another famous iconoclast. 
Last of all, Clement X. remodelled the exterior of 
the tribune, and Benedict XIV. employed Ferdi- 
nando Fuga to erect the existing ugly and vulgar 
facade, which no doubt deters many hasty visitors 
from even exploring the beautiful interior. 

From first to last, then, Santa Maria Maggiore, 
of which I have here given but a most generalised 
account, must be accepted as a historical monument 
of the growth of Mariolatry, and a gauge of the 
point that cult had reached in each generation. 
Whoever visits such a church ought to have read 
up beforehand its architecture and its annals as 



Romewards 283 

thoroughly as he is able, and ought then to follow up 
these clues intelligently and carefully, by identify- 
ing each stage in this strange eventful history. 

Rome is full of such deposits of stratified art — 
lying layer above layer, and only to be deciphered 
by care and observation. That is why you should 
visit Rome last, and read it by the light of what 
you have learned elsewhere. 

I desist at last. For Rome is endless. If I 
follow its example, I may possibly weary you. 



CHAPTER XVII 

AFTER ROME 

A ND now that I have once steered you safely 
•* •*• to Rome, and seen you fairly through it, 
I don't much care what you do with yourself 
afterward. By this time, I hope and even ven- 
ture to believe, you are capable of taking care of 
yourself; you have learned a method* It is the 
method alone that I have been anxious all along to 
impress upon you. Once you have acquired it, 
you can be trusted to walk alone ; wherever you 
go and whatever you see, you will at least know 
how to see it. 

Nevertheless, I will offer here a few much more 
cursory suggestions for your further touring. 

Naturally, after Rome, you will go on to Naples. 
And the interest of Naples is almost all antique; 
so that on our general principle of retrogressing 
slowly from the known to the unknown, it ought 
to come in precisely at this period. Geography 
here assists my principles. The best time to see 
Naples, too, is perhaps just when cold begins to 



After Rome 285 

drive you southward from Rome. You will then 
find Sorrento, Amalfi, Capri, and other beauty- 
spots in the neighbourhood of Naples extremely 
pleasant places to visit. The objects of interest in 
the Naples district are mainly the bay and Vesu- 
vius — nature ; or, in human handiwork, Pompeii 
and the remains from Pompeii in the Naples 
Museum. The town itself is naught, indeed, save 
for that saving Museum ; it is merely the point of 
departure for visiting Pompeii, Ptestum, Pozzuoli, 
Baice, and the Capo Miseno. You cannot go far 
wrong in seeing any of these; while at Ravello and 
other mountain towns about you will find interest- 
ing relics of the early Romanesque period, which 
will afford a pleasing relief from the pure classicism 
of the district as a whole. Undoubtedly, however, 
the things to see at Naples are the marble and 
bronze sculpture and the antique frescoes. To these 
especially I advise you to devote yourself. 

From Naples, it is easy to run across to Palermo, 
and see Sicily. Palermo itself , and Monreale, have 
transitional mosaics of the Norman period of the 
deepest interest ; elsewhere the great attraction of 
Sicily is its splendid series of Greek temples, which 
carry us back to the beginnings of classical sculp- 
ture and architecture. I will not map out a route. 
You will find your way for yourself, I doubt not, 



286 The European Tour 

to Selinunto, Girgenti, Syracuse, Catania, Taormina, 
Messina. ' 

These are trips for the winter months, say from 
November to March or April. In spring, you may 
go north again, spending a short time to compare 
notes and mark progress in Rome and Florence. 
You will discover, after Naples and Sicily, that 
many things in Rome take a fresh meaning for you. 
On your return, I would advise you to look espe- 
cially at Ancient Rome, by the light thrown on it 
from Pompeii and the Sicilian temples. 

The way northward in the later spring might 
well be by Verona, the Brenner, Meran (or the 
Dolomites, if you prefer it), and so to Innsbruck, 
Here you might fairly start your consideration of 
German art, other than Rhenish. From Inns- 
bruck, continue to Munich, or else diverge to the 
Salxkammergut. Of course, endless picturesque 
objects and places stud all this subalpine country ; 
but you cannot see all, and my advice to you is : 
stick to what is most important. " But that," you 
will say, " is exactly the opposite advice from the 
counsel you gave us in the Roman galleries ! " 
Not quite. I meant in that case, do not confine 
your attention to the most praised objects, because, 
in the first place, they cannot be understood in 
isolation, and, in the second place, they have not 



After Rome 287 

always been wisely selected. I mean here, on the 
other hand, do confine your attention to what will 
teach you most ; it is as beautiful as the other, and 
much more lastingly valuable. By turning aside 
to visit some " charming picturesque old German 
town " which some friend has discovered, you may 
waste a day which might better have been devoted 
to Orvieto or Perugia, to Assisi or Pavia. 

Munich is a delightful town in its way, with a 
purely artificial modern quarter, and a nucleus of 
old Bavarian architecture worth all the rest put 
together. Its main interest, however, is modern 
and museumish. It depends upon its collections. 
Of these there are four. The Old Pictures include 
several good examples of the Rhenish School, 
which you will now realise in its parental relations 
with Venice ; besides several excellent Flemings 
(Memling, Van der Weyden, Gerard David, 
Quentin Matsys) ; and also a fine collection of 
the more native Swabian and Franconian School, 
(Wohlgemuth, Holbein, and Durer, the last-named 
of whom will here first become really known to 
you.) The Italians are likewise well represented ; 
and you will be glad that you have visited Italy 
before being turned loose upon this heterogeneous 
scratch lot of Raphaels, Peruginos, Palma Vecchios, 
and Titians. You will also find some charming 



288 The European Tour 

Rubenses ; I use the adjective advisedly, for here, 
and only here, Rubens is sometimes positively 
charming. The New Pinakothek will not detain 
you long ; but the Glyptothek, with the iEginetan 
sculptures, will delight and attract you. If you 
have been in Sicily, these archaic Greek sculptures 
will compare interestingly with those of Selinunto; 
and if you have not been there, you will be in- 
troduced for the first time to a deliciously naive 
and captivating moment in the evolution of plastic 
art. The other great collection, far less important, 
is that of the Decorative Arts. 

Munich as a whole is thus emphatically a place 
to see after you have seen the birthplaces of the 
various arts it now hospitably houses. In itself, it 
is merely a clean and well-built South German 
capital. 

After Munich, Nuremberg. Here you touch 
ground for Germany outside the Rhineland ; for 
Nuremberg was the centre of trade in mediaeval 
and Renaissance Europe between North and South 
Germany. It is still highly picturesque, though of 
late much spoiled by factories ; and as the home 
of Albert Durer it deserves a visit. But a couple 
of days may suffice — judging at least by an Italian 
standard. I will add, too, that after seeing Italy 
you will be able to see more elsewhere in a shorter 



After Rome 289 

time; you have learned the alphabet, and can now 
read straight off almost at sight what before you 
had to spell out with time and toil from painful 
hieroglyphics. 

Unless Prague beckons you off the line (and I 
do not recommend it) you may go direct from 
Nuremberg to Dresden. Even more than Munich, 
the Saxon capital is a town of collections. You 
ought to see it ; but you can see it easily. I am 
writing, of course, still from the point of view of 
the general tourist. You may happen to be musi- 
cal ; and in that case Dresden will naturally attract 
you for a longer stay ; just as you will also desire 
to go to Bayreuth, if you are in Europe during the 
festival. These things lie outside my beat; and 
the musical will know where to go for information. 
Taken as a town to see, you can see Dresden on 
the strength of what you have already learnt in 
Italy. I may add that Guides to Munich and 
Dresden will in time be added to my Historical 
Series. 

Mention of Bayreuth makes me think of the 
Oberammergau Passion Play. About all such func- 
tions, from Holy Week at Rome (now practically 
obsolete) down to Royal Jubilees and Coronations, 
my advice would be, stay severely away from them. 
They waste time, and they are not so important 
19 



290 The European Tour 

as the permanent sights of Europe There are 
people who will go to Venice, I know, to see a 
Universal Exhibition. They will not go for 
Bellini, Titian, Tintoret, but they will go for 
biscuits, sewing machines, type-writers, and apple- 
parers. I do not write for these. Why should I ? 
They know what they like, and need no man's 
counsel. 

Berlin I regard as a needless luxury. 

After Germany, what ? Well, if you take my 
advice, go home to America, and chew the cud of 
contemplation. Think it all over. You can " do 
Spain," of course, if you are so minded ; but I 
strongly dissuade you. Indeed, I think the tour 
here sketched out, even if extended over six 
months or a year, is quite as much as any healthy 
human brain is capable at one time of even par- 
tially assimilating. To say the truth, it must result 
in mental indigestion. I would never recommend 
a European to see so much on end. It is more 
than he can correlate. But I allow that the in- 
terposition of the Atlantic does make a certain 
difference; once here, the American naturally 
wants to get his money's worth, and to be repaid 
for his seven days of speechless misery. There- 
fore I will allow that he may perhaps do the 
Grand Tour — England, Paris, Belgium, the Rhine, 



After Rome 291 

Italy, Germany — all at one fell swoop ; provided 
always he does not absolutely bolt it. I have tried 
to discourage bolting. I have put you in the way 
of seeing Europe instead of rushing through it. 
You will spoil all if, after all my pains, you at- 
tempt to add Spain, Egypt, Algeria, the Holy 
Land, Constantinople. 

Go home, then, quietly, and ruminate. Let 
what you have seen sink in and change you. Read 
as much as you like ; read, read, by all means : 
don't think Europe has sunk to the bottom of the 
sea because you no longer behold it. It is there, 
seething, throbbing, palpitating as ever. Continue 
your studies in books, and form clear ideas of what 
you want to see next time you come over. Then, 
perhaps, you may add to your trophies Spain and 
the morning-lands of Islam. But if this book has 
succeeded in its purpose, I think it much more 
likely your reading meanwhile will suggest to you 
that you have not seen half enough yet of France, 
of Belgium, above all, of Italy. I linger ever 
on that loved name Italy ! You will return to 
Europe, when chance favours, determined to look 
up a Delia Robbia here, a Romanesque fresco 
there; you will regret that you missed the shrine 
of St. Augustine, or failed to observe the sarcoph- 
agus of Junius Bassus. Even if you extend your 



292 The European Tour 

visit that second time to Cairo, say, and Luxor 
you will first turn out of your way to visit some 
church in Provence or some picture at Spello of 
which you have read meanwhile ; you will want to 
see a sculptured stone in the Scotch Highlands, or 
to re-examine a half-defaced fresco from Pompeii 
at Naples. You will have learned what interests 
you ; and when at last you reach mouldering 
Cairo, you will desire to see, not merely the 
Pyramids and the Mosque of Mehemet Ali, but 
some old brown-faced Madonna at the Coptic 
church of Abu Sirgeh, or some black image of 
Pasht at the Ghizeh Museum. If you have 
reached that point, then Europe indeed has told 
you its story, — a story that relatively few among 
its own toiling millions either know or care about, 
but that to us of the new world comes back to-day 
with a strange mingled sense of antiquity and 
novelty. 

So here I leave you, by the steps of the Dresden 
Museum, with the glow of the Sistine Madonna 
still shed upon your face. Or leave you, save for 
a few apologetic remarks, which I shall more con- 
veniently relegate to a parting chapter. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE AUTHOR'S APOLOGY 

A ND now, at the very end, I am going to 
•* ^ answer a few criticisms which I know have 
been at the tip of your tongue ever since you 
got past my first three or four chapters. "Why 
is this man so dead set on instructing us ? " you 
ask. u Why can't he allow us now and again to 
amuse ourselves ? Are we always to be trotting 
about, looking close at the shapes of haloes and 
the traces of Mantegna's influence on Bellini ? 
May n't we sometimes go to a park or a theatre ? 
May n't we sometimes have a day off, — a Saturday 
half-holiday, like Bunthorne in Patience ? Must 
we never relax sufficiently to indulge in a glass of 
Bavarian beer and a cigarette at a cafe? Ay, 
marry, may you ! My dear sir or madam, you can 
certainly do all these things and welcome. I do 
them myself, — all save the Bavarian beer, which 
does n't agree with me, and the cigarette, which 
produces unpleasant internal symptoms. I prefer 
a glass of Brauneberger or of good old Malvasia. 



294 The European Tour 

But you will admit, it does not need a special 
guide to tell you about these things. I do not feel 
called upon to recommend you the particular restau- 
rant in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele at Milan 
which sells the best rum punch in small china tea- 
cups, so innocent-looking that you can drink it before 
the very face of a teetotal archdeacon. I am not 
eager to point out to you the shop in the Montagne 
de la Cour at Brussels where you can have after- 
noon tea with fresh strawberry tartlets which 
remind one at once of Jan van Eyck and Paradise. 
It is not my function to describe the Paris music- 
halls, or to show you the way to the doubtfully 
joyous cafes chantants of Montmartre. All these 
things, good, bad, or indifferent, those who desire 
them can find out for themselves. The detail of 
life requires no cicerone. 

My task has been rather to suggest you a point 
of view of Europe as a whole which will give you 
in the end even more solid pleasure than the straw- 
berry tartlets, excellent as they are. I do not 
despise strawberries ; on the contrary, I will engage 
to eat as many as you care to pay for. I have not 
said a word in this book about the green huitres de 
Marenne at Nice, nor about the Marseillais way of 
dressing bouillabaisse. I did not feel called upon to 
do so. But don't imagine on that account I think 



The Author's Apology 295 

the honest tourist must never think of anything 
but Madonnas. Several admirable and noteworthy 
things in Europe are more recent than the Crusades. 
My plan does not include them, — that is all ; and 
you can find out everything you need to know 
about them without my telling you. 

Let me give a more serious parallel. Personally, 
I happen to be an enthusiastic botanist. Wherever 
I find myself in Switzerland, Italy, the Tyrol, 
Algeria, my attention is almost equally divided 
between man's handicraft or arts and the local flora. 
Yet I have not said a word here about the 
orchids of the Apennines, nor about the gentians 
and globe-flowers of the alpine springtide. Why ? 
Because most American travellers are not botanists. 
Those who are not, can see for themselves 
that the anemones on the Riviera are scarlet 
and purple, that the narcissus covers the ground 
with cloth of gold ; those who are, will know that 
the way to learn about all these exquisite creatures, 
if they have time to learn about them, is to buy a 
local Flora. As a rule, tourists have not time for 
these things ; and I think they are right. If one 
spends one's life in Europe, one can manage to 
intercalate the ferns and buttercups among the 
churches and museums ; to each its season. But 
if one comes from America for a trip of a few 



296 The European Tour 

months, unless the interest in science is very 
strong, it is not worth while spending time on 
scientific studies which can be almost equally well 
pursued in America. Take from Europe what is 
most peculiarly its own. Nature is everywhere ; 
Fra Angelico and Donatello are only in Florence. 

On this account, in my Historical Guides, I do 
not usually mention fauna, flora, geology, or aspect 
of country ; nor do I mention natural-history 
museums, botanical and zoological gardens, public 
libraries, or other objects, however important, 
which are not historically or artistically interesting. 
My design is to lead the tourist who visits a town 
for the general education and pleasure it can afford 
to learn something about its growth, its arts, its 
buildings, its history. The innumerable other 
sources of human interest it contains I leave on 
one side, not because they do not interest me, nor 
again because I expect them not to interest others, 
but because they are alien to the purpose and scope 
of these particular handbooks. I conceive that I 
have something to tell you which you cannot so 
conveniently and compendiously obtain elsewhere ; 
and if I am right in that conception, I have jus- 
tified my existence. For all else, you will go to 
Baedeker or Murray. 

Finally, a word as to books to read, from this 



JMU9W 48 



The Author's Apology 297 

special point of view of culture. If possible, I 
recommend you to take with you on the sea voyage 
Layard's edition of Kugler's Italian Schools of Paint- 
ing, Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, and 
Mrs. Jameson's Legends of the Madonna, and to read 
them in the intervals of more painful experience. 
These should be your constant companions 
throughout Europe; they will help to . unravel 
more of its secret than any other books you can 
easily carry. For special places, consult the list 
of local authorities I give in my separate Guides. 
Do not read diffuse and wordy books ; confine 
yourself to works of solid information, whose state- 
ments bear directly upon the buildings, cities, 
pictures, or statues you are actually engaged in 
observing. 

And so — good-bye ! Enjoy your Europe ! 






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